Geneva: International mediator Lakhdar Brahimi scrambled to keep diplomacy alive on Wednesday, bringing forward to Thursday a meeting with senior US and Russian officials backing opposing sides in Syria’s war.

Brahimi first met Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov, who was holding separate talks later with Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Mua’alem in Geneva, diplomats said.

An opposition source said the National Coalition met with the Russian ambassador to the UN in Geneva on Tuesday evening as involvement by Moscow, President Bashar Al Assad’s ally, is stepped up after two days of talks ended with no progress.

Brahimi, the United Nations envoy, began a joint session with the delegations of the Syrian government and opposition at midday on Wednesday, a UN statement said. But the two sides remain far apart in their approach to talks sponsored by their respective backers Russia and the United States.

Meanwhile, operations to evacuate civilians and deliver aid in besieged parts of Syria’s Homs resumed on Wednesday after being suspended a day earlier. But there was still no word on the fate of hundreds of boys and men detained for questioning by authorities after they were evacuated from the city.

“At 11am (0900 GMT), food aid was able to enter the Old City of Homs,” the provincial governor Talal Barazi said. The Syrian Red Crescent tweeted pictures of its staff loading sacks of aid onto flatbed trucks for transport into besieged parts of the city.

More than 1,000 men, women and children have been evacuated from besieged rebel-held parts of Homs since Friday, many weak and malnourished after surviving for more than 18 months on dwindling food supplies.

“There are children there, and this is very heartbreaking, that this is the first time they see a banana,” Syrian Red Crescent head of operations Khaled Erksoussi said. “Our psychological support teams are there to try to deal with the cases as they come out, but eventually the teams themselves will need psychological care because the situation is very emotional.”

Red Crescent workers backed by UN agencies began evacuating some of the estimated 3,000 people trapped in besieged areas on Friday under a UN-mediated deal. Despite the suspension of operations on Tuesday, more than 1,150 people have been evacuated since the operations began and the World Food Programme has delivered enough food for 1,550 families remaining inside.

Concern has grown, however, over the fate of 336 boys and men aged 15 to 55 who UN officials say were detained for questioning by authorities as they left Homs.

Just 42 have been released, according to UN figures, raising fears among activists that the regime is rounding up military-age men among those leaving.

Activists inside Homs said some men leaving had been prevented from going to areas of their choice, stripped of their ID cards and issued ID documents instead.

“There are some 60 activists in the besieged areas. Some of them want to leave, but will only do so if there are guarantees for their safety,” said Yazan, an activist who asked that his full name not be published for fear of retribution.