Berlin (AFP) - Germany, trying to staunch the flow of Syrian refugees, has placed high hurdles for them to be reunited with their families, creating a Kafkaesque nightmare in the courts.

As the country enters a decisive election year with anti-migrant populists on the rise, the mass arrival of refugees' wives and children would have created a major challenge for Chancellor Angela Merkel as she seeks a fourth term.

Merkel's popularity plunged after the arrival of nearly 900,000 asylum seekers from the world's crisis zones last year but has recovered of late as arrivals have fallen.

However, for a rising number of the newcomers themselves, many of them men who arrived without their families, the situation is untenable. Critics slam the restrictions as "inhumane."

Since the start of the year, 32,551 refugees — the overwhelming majority of them Syrians (28,444) — have filed legal complaints to gain recognition as refugees under the definition set out by the 1951 Geneva Conventions.

Those rules specifically include a right to family reunification.

However, the authorities charged with according asylum in Germany, the Federal Office for Migrants and Refugees (BAMF), as a rule now offer only "subsidiary protection" to Syrians fleeing a civil war that has ravaged their country for more than five years.  

This lower-tier status only provides a temporary residence permit good for one year and subject to renewal and bars the application for family members to be allowed entry to Germany until March 2018. The process itself can take another two years. 

Walid, a 41-year-old cook from Damascus, has given up hope of seeing his wife and six children, whom he left in Turkey en route to Berlin, anytime soon. 

"I'd be willing to go back to Turkey to be near my children but I'm not even allowed to do that because I have a Syrian passport and you need a visa to go to Turkey," he said, declining to provide his full name.  

German refugee rights group Pro Asyl slammed the policy for the burden it placed on applicants.

"You have to assume you'll be separated for four to five years. That is an incredibly inhumane hardship for the people affected and their families, who are exposed to war," it said.

"There is clearly a political motivation" behind offering only subsidiary protection to most asylum seekers, Hamburg-based attorney Tobias Behnke said.

"I think the idea is to make Germany less attractive for refugees."

Last June, 46 percent of Syrian asylum seekers received only subsidiary protection, up sharply from the 14 percent registered two years before, Pro Asyl said.  

In 2015, at the height of the influx, the vast majority of Syrian applicants — about 96 percent — automatically received full refugee status without even having to undergo an interview at the BAMF.

But from this year, the office has insisted on determining whether applicants personally underwent persecution in Syria to determine their status. 

The leftist opposition has protested against the change but Merkel's right-left coalition government insists that the BAMF sets its policies independently. 

As a result, about one-third of the 100,000 Syrians granted only limited protection have turned to the German justice system since January, forcing courts to take on more personnel to manage the caseload. 

Most of the time, the legal battle has proved worth it for refugees. 

According to BAMF figures, three-quarters of the 3,490 cases already heard have been decided in favour of the Syrians, with judges accepting their argument that they risked persecution by the Bashar al-Assad regime for having fled. 

However a higher court last month issued a ruling dismissing the risk, upholding the BAMF's policy of delaying family reunification.

"The higher you go with the appeals, the more political the justice system becomes," charged Bernd Mesovic of Pro Asyl.  

SEE ALSO: 1,400 saved off the coast of Libya in one day as Italy sees record migrant arrivals

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MOSCOW (AP) — The Russian military is criticizing the United Nations for dragging its feet on delivering humanitarian aid to the areas of Aleppo, which have been recently seized by Syrian government forces.

Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said that the Russian military has been the only source of food, medicine and other supplies for 90,000 residents of Aleppo's neighborhoods seized by the Syrian army this week.

In Friday's statement, Konashenkov called on Jan Egeland, a senior U.N. aid official for Syria, to move faster to provide aid to the area.

Russian-backed Syrian government troops have made significant gains in the rebel-held eastern part of the city since the weekend.

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Aleppo (Syria) (AFP) - Rebels put up fierce resistance on Friday in a key district of Syria's battered Aleppo, where a regime offensive has left bodies in the streets and sparked a global outcry.

The government assault on the northern city has spurred a mass exodus of tens of thousands of residents from the opposition-held east and prompted fresh calls by Russia for aid corridors.  

President Bashar al-Assad's forces captured the city's northeast this week and were focused on seizing Sheikh Saeed, a large district on the city's southeast edges. 

But anti-government fighters put up a strong defence there overnight, rolling back recent government gains, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

"The regime and allied fighters... wanted to take this neighbourhood at any cost, because capturing it would allow them to target all remaining rebel-held districts," said Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman. 

"But rebels put up ferocious resistance, because they knew they would be trapped if Sheikh Saeed fell," Abdel Rahman added. 

The head of the Britain-based monitor said opposition forces were now once again in control of at least 70 percent of the neighbourhood.

Sheikh Saeed borders the last remaining sections of Aleppo still in rebel hands -- a collection of densely populated residential neighbourhoods where thousands have sought refuge from advancing regime forces.

In preparation for street-by-street fighting in these districts, hundreds of fighters from Syria's elite Republican Guard and Fourth Division arrived in Aleppo on Friday, according to the Observatory.

Rocket fire, clashes

More than 300 civilians, including dozens of children, have been killed in east Aleppo since the government began its offensive on November 15, according to the Observatory.

Retaliatory rocket fire by the rebels on government-held western areas of the city has killed 55 civilians, the monitor says.

According to Syrian state news agency SANA, one civilian was killed and three were wounded Friday in rebel rocket attacks.

An AFP correspondent could hear steady rocket fire on west Aleppo overnight and into Friday morning.

Intermittent clashes on Friday rocked a block of residential buildings on the city's eastern edges, where advancing regime forces have sought to secure the road leading towards Aleppo's airport.

The escalation of violence in Aleppo has been met with international outrage, including a warning by the UN that the city's east could become "a giant graveyard."

Russia on Thursday proposed setting up four humanitarian corridors into east Aleppo to bring in aid and evacuated severely wounded people. 

Moscow has announced several humanitarian pauses in Aleppo to allow civilians to flee, but until the recent military escalation, only a handful did so.

Its support for Assad, including launching a bombing campaign in support of his forces in September 2015, means many residents of east Aleppo have been wary of such offers in the past. 

Since Saturday more than 50,000 people have poured out of east Aleppo into territory controlled by government forces or local Kurdish authorities, according to the Observatory. 

No end to deadlock

Many are transported to temporary shelters outside the city, where they register with Syrian authorities to receive food, blankets, and mattresses. 

For many, the hot meals they receive at these shelters are their first in months, after a suffocating regime siege since July on Aleppo's rebel-held districts. 

The loss of east Aleppo -- a rebel stronghold since 2012 -- would be the biggest blow to Syria's opposition in more than five years. 

More than 200 civil society groups on Thursday appealed to the UN's General Assembly to take action on Syria's five-year war because "there is no sign that the Security Council deadlock will end anytime soon." 

"This is why we, a global coalition of 223 civil society organisations, urgently call upon UN member states to step in and request an Emergency Special Session of the UN General Assembly to demand an end to all unlawful attacks in Aleppo and elsewhere in Syria, and immediate and unhindered humanitarian access so that life-saving aid can reach all those in need."

Syria's conflict erupted in March 2011 with protests calling for Assad's ouster, but it has since evolved into a bloody and highly globalised war.

The violence has killed more than 300,000 people and forced more than half the country's pre-war population out of their homes.

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BEIRUT/AMMAN (Reuters) - As the Syrian government and its allies prepared to ramp up their attack on Aleppo in November, one of the rebel groups defending the opposition-held part of the city took up arms against another, seizing its stores of ammunition, fuel and food.

The incident near an Aleppo frontline underlined the rebel rivalries that only worsened in the face of an unprecedented onslaught by Russian-backed government forces, supported by Shi'ite militias from across the region.

Rebel infighting has plagued the Syrian opposition since the start of the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad in 2011, helping to put him on the verge of the biggest victory yet.

The unexpectedly rapid retreat in Aleppo is provoking recriminations among an opposition divided by local rivalries as well as ideological differences between jihadists and more nationalist groups.

With Aleppo long seen as a stronghold of mainstream groups fighting under the Free Syrian Army (FSA) banner, jihadist influence will only grow if Assad and his allies win there, leaving the West with even fewer partners on the ground.

In the November incident, an FSA group, Fastaqim, came under attack from the Nour al-Din al-Zinki movement, a faction that also counts itself part of the FSA but has recently moved closer to jihadist groups.

This damaged morale. "Unfortunately it had a very negative impact on the factions and on the internal situation," said an official in another Aleppo rebel group, the Jabha Shamiya, speaking from Turkey.

"It affected the psychological condition of the fighters, and the internal situation for the civilians."

The struggle amounted to a turf war, as so often among the myriad rebel groups.

Zinki sources said the background to the incident was a Fastaqim plot against one of its allies. Fastaqim said Zinki was trying to crush mainstream groups in Aleppo in collaboration with the jihadists of the Fateh al-Sham group.

"In some ways, the relations among the Aleppo factions deteriorated even as the pro-regime offensive was ramping up," said Noah Bonsey, senior analyst with International Crisis Group. "That may have played a role in the opposition's limited ability to defend against the opening stages of the offensives."

Jihadist influence to expand

The rebels have been on the back foot since the Russian air force intervened on Assad's behalf in September, 2015. Rebels say their internal divisions are a marginal factor in their setbacks when compared with the firepower unleashed by the Russian bombers, Shi'ite militias, and the army.

But splits have nevertheless played a part. Conflict among rebels this year helped Assad and his allies to make significant gains near his seat of power in Damascus.

The newly-appointed leader of one of the biggest rebel groups, the Islamist Ahrar al-Sham, blamed "destructive divisions" this week for the opposition's setbacks, and urged a new effort toward unity.

But Ahrar al-Sham also faces divisions in its own ranks between one camp that is close to the FSA groups, and another that wants closer ties with al Qaeda-inspired insurgents.

The rebels are making what may be a final attempt to organize themselves into a more effective "Aleppo Army". But after losing large parts of their territory in the city, it may be too late.

The loss of Aleppo would still leave the rebels in control of large areas to the west and southwest of the city, including all of Idlib province and large parts of Hama province.

But these are areas where jihadist factions dominate, including Fateh al-Sham, formerly known as the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front, which has crushed numerous Western-backed rebel factions during the conflict.

Jihadist influence discouraged the United States from supplying rebels with the more powerful weaponry they sought. U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has indicated he may stop supporting the opposition altogether.

A rebel commander in a town north of Aleppo said that instead of protesting against Assad, people in his area had put up posters criticizing rebel commanders.

"They are all demanding unity," he said.

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MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Monday he was confident Moscow and Washington can reach a deal in talks this week on the withdrawal of all rebels from the eastern part of the Syrian city of Aleppo.

He told a news conference once the deal was reached, rebels who stay in the besieged eastern part of the city will be treated as terrorists and Russia will support the operation of the Syrian army against them.

"Those armed groups who refuse to leave eastern Aleppo will be considered to be terrorists," Lavrov said. "We will treat them as such, as terrorists, as extremists and will support a Syrian army operation against those criminal squads."

Russia and the United States will start talks on the withdrawal in Geneva on Tuesday evening or Wednesday morning, and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has sent his proposals on routes and timing of the withdrawal, Lavrov said.

"We believe that when the Americans proposed their initiative for militants to leave eastern Aleppo, they realized what steps they and their allies, who have an influence on militants stuck in eastern Aleppo, would have to take."

He added that a United Nations resolution on a ceasefire would be counterproductive because a ceasefire would allow rebels to regroup.

(Reporting by Maria Kiselyova,; writing by Maria Tsvetkova; Editing by Christian Lowe)

SEE ALSO: Syrian rebels have lost control of more than a third of east Aleppo amid a major offensive by pro-Assad forces

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ALEPPO, Syria (AP) — Rebel shelling of the Syrian government-held part of Aleppo killed a Russian nurse in a makeshift Russian hospital in the city on Monday while the Defense Ministry in Moscow said a Russian fighter jet crashed into the Mediterranean Sea after returning from a sortie over Syria.

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Aleppo (Syria) (AFP) - Kafa Jawish hadn't slept in days, daydreaming of seeing her home in east Aleppo for the first time in four years, but when she arrived she found little more than rubble.

The 36-year-old was among hundreds of Syrians returning to east Aleppo in recent days after the army recaptured large swathes of the city from rebels and encouraged residents to visit neighborhoods and homes they left years earlier.

She could barely contain her excitement as she sat on a government bus heading to her neighborhood of Haydariya in northeast Aleppo, recaptured by the army earlier in the week.

"I left my house four years ago and I'm just so happy to be going to see it, I haven't slept for three days because I'm so excited," she told AFP as the bus wound its way from western Aleppo.

"I want to ululate with happiness when I see my house safe and sound," she said, dressed warmly in a black coat and headscarf that framed her smiling face.

Stuffed into a bus crowded with other passengers, she and her husband Tajeddin Ahmed discussed their plans to return home, after years living in the Syriac Quarter in central Aleppo.

"I'm going to go back to living in my house no matter what condition it's in," she said firmly.

"We're tired of paying rent, we miss our house and our families and our neighbors."

The couple fled Haydariya in July 2012, when rebels entered the city, leaving at dawn one morning without any of their belongings and moving into the ancient Syriac Quarter.

More than half of Syria's population has been displaced internally or abroad by the conflict that began with anti-government protests in March 2011 before spiraling into a war that has killed over 300,000 people.

Shocking destruction

"I want to go back to the house that I lived in with my family and go back to living together safely and happily," said Ahmed, 45.

"I'm really hoping we'll find the house in good shape."

His phone rang as they talked: an old neighbor who couldn't leave work asked Ahmed to check on his house too.

As the bus set out, Jawish expressed hope that her neighborhood might be relatively untouched, reasoning it was far from the frontlines that saw the worst fighting.

East Aleppo has seen some of the worst violence of the war, and has been pounded by the army since it began an operation to recapture the city in mid-November.

As the bus edged closer to Haydariya, Jawish’s smile dropped away, and she and Ahmed fell silent.

Along the road, buildings were partially or fully collapsed, windows long blown out and furnishings destroyed or looted.

The route itself was cratered in places, and the bus bounced as Ahmed stared grimly out of the window, murmuring prayers.

Jawish tried to pick out places that held memories, spotting an area she used to picnic with her husband.

Growing impatient with the bus's slow, careful progress, she tried in vain to convince her husband to get out and walk the rest of the way so she could get to her house quicker.

But when they finally arrived, she burst into tears at the sight of their building, parts of the length of one side of it completely gone, leaving the inside exposed to the elements.

Old life 'a memory'

Most of the windows were blown out, along with their frames, the front door was missing and a stack of broken tiles was piled up in the doorway.

Unable to enter the damaged building, the couple stood on tiptoes to peer in through a ground floor window at their old apartment.

"We were so optimistic, I thought I was going to ululate when we arrived, but now we've found it like this, uninhabitable," she said tearfully.

"We spent years working to make a home, buying things for it, bit by bit, until we had a washing machine and a fridge, and now there's nothing in it and the house is destroyed. Oh God."

She described the concerts that once took place at their house, with people playing the lute and singing.

"When I look at the house I remember all those beautiful moments."

Ahmed appeared stunned as he looked on, repeating over and over: "Thank God for our health and well-being."

"We sacrificed so much to make this house our home, how will we start over again?" Jawish asked.

"I know that our relatives will all be in the same situation as us, who will help us?"

The couple left to walk through the neighborhood, checking on the homes of their neighbors, all similarly damaged and gutted.

Their old life, Jawish said, "has become just a memory".

SEE ALSO: Infighting among Syrian rebels has strengthened pro-Assad forces in Aleppo

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The Obama administration's failure to enforce the "red line" it drew for intervention in Syria against President Bashar Assad in 2012 "cost" the US "significantly" in the Middle East, US Secretary of State John Kerry said at the annual Saban Forum on Sunday.

The remark appeared to be the first time Kerry has stated that not following through on the threat to retaliate against Assad for his use of chemical weapons to kill 1,500 people in August 2013 damaged the US' reputation in the region.

He noted, however, that he thinks President Obama's decision not to attack Assad has been "misinterpreted"— Obama did want to bomb Assad, Kerry said, but he wanted to get approval from Congress first.

As Obama was waiting for that approval — which Kerry said was "not forthcoming"— the US accepted a Russian-backed deal to eliminate Assad's chemical weapons stockpile in return for not enforcing the red line.

"I know the cost – this has been a topic of conversation here – of the President’s decision when he decided not to enforce the redline through the bombing," Kerry said when asked if there was anything he wold have done differently during his time at the State Department. "But in fact, that’s greatly misinterpreted."

He continued: 

"People have interpreted it as his decision not to when, in fact, he never made a decision not to bomb. He made the decision to bomb. He simply decided he had to go to Congress because David Cameron lost the vote in the parliament on a Thursday, and on Friday, President Obama felt, hearing from Congress, 'Oh, you got to come to us, you got to come to us,' he would go there and get the decision. Well, the decision wasn’t forthcoming, and in the meantime, I got a deal with Lavrov to get all of the chemical weapons out of the country."

Kerry noted, however, that in end it "doesn't matter" if the red line promise was misinterpreted or not, because "perception can often just be the reality."

"We got a better result out of not doing it [bombing Assad], but it was the threat of doing it that brought about the result, and the lack of doing it perception-wise cost us significantly in the region," he said. "And I know that and so does the President. As much as we think it’s a misinterpretation– it doesn’t matter. It cost. Perception can often just be the reality."

Kerry concluded on a more optimistic note, however, saying that the US is "on the right course" in the region and will stay that way as long as "we do not retreat."

"Not just militarily with our presence and our potential use of force, but more importantly right now, our ability to try to deal with these countries’ governance and their ability to be able to address these young people and the possibilities of the future," he said. "If we don’t do that as a country, we will be inviting a lot of other problems as a consequence."

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Syrian government forces gained more ground in the battle for Aleppo on Monday, as Russia and China vetoed a UN Security Council resolution that sought a seven-day truce in the battered city.

Three weeks into their offensive, the army and allied militias seized the Qadi Askar neighbourhood overnight and were in control of about two-thirds of the former rebel territory in east Aleppo.

"The Syrian government and its allies are now about 800 metres from the citadel ... They're now in control of about 60 percent of what used to be the rebel-controlled east," Al Jazeera's Stefanie Dekker said, reporting from Gaziantep along the Turkey-Syria border.

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the latest advances had left the large al-Shaar neighbourhood effectively encircled by government forces.

Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman said the army was attacking both from inside east Aleppo as well as from the government-held western districts.

"The regime is draining the rebel fighters of ammunition by opening many fronts at the same time," he said.

The rebels defending al-Shaar may be forced to abandon it or risk being cut off from the other areas.

The Syrian army could not immediately be reached for comment.

"The regime advanced [into al-Shaar] and there were clashes all night. The clashes are still going on," Zakaria Malahifji, a Turkey-based official with the Aleppo rebel group Fastaqim, told Reuters news agency.

A fighter with the Nour al-Din al-Zinki group in Aleppo said government forces had made advances on several fronts, putting al-Shaar under pressure, but it had not yet been besieged.

A rebel official in a third rebel group, the Jabha Shamiya, said al-Shaar had effectively fallen since government forces seized nearby areas that control access to it.

"Karm al-Jabal and al-Shaar are considered fallen," the official with the Jabha Shamiya group told Reuters, speaking from Turkey.

President Bashar al-Assad's forces have made steady gains since launching the assault to retake all of rebel-held east Aleppo nearly three weeks ago. Its loss would mark the biggest defeat for rebel forces in Syria's five-year civil war.

Tens of thousands of east Aleppo residents have fled to other parts of the city to escape the fighting, which has raised widespread international concern.

Russia vetoed Monday's resolution arguing that ceasefire would allow rebels to regroup, and that time was needed for talks between Washington and Moscow.

It was the sixth time Russia has vetoed a Security Council resolution on Syria since 2011 and the fifth time China has blocked action. The remaining 11 council members voted in favour.

Earlier, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov had slammed the proposed temporary truce as a "provocative step". 

"Taking into account all aspects and the current development of the situation, the draft resolution coming against the backdrop of the Russian-American initiative is for the most part a provocative step that undermines Russian-American efforts," Lavrov told a press conference.

He also said Moscow was confident that it would reach a deal with Washington in talks this week on the withdrawal of all rebels from eastern part of the city, adding that rebel fighters who refused to leave the city would be treated as "terrorists".

"We know that Russia and the US consider [Jabhat] Fateh al-Sham a 'terrorist' organisation, which was formerly known as al-Nusra Front and linked to al-Qaeda. Now they’re saying, 'if you don't leave, all of you are going to be treated as terrorists,'" said Al Jazeera's Dekker.

Russia has said all rebel groups must leave the area before it allows any access to humanitarian aid.

The Observatory says at least 319 people - including 44 children - have been killed in east Aleppo since the offensive began some three weeks ago.

Rebel fire on the government-held west of the city has killed 69 people, including 28 children, in the same period, the monitor says.

The White Helmets, a volunteer rescue group that operates in rebel-held areas, said that at least 24 people were killed and 85 injured in air strikes and shelling on Monday.

The latest government offensive has added to the misery in east Aleppo, which has been targeted by relentless government fire since it fell to rebels in 2012.

The city's east was surrounded by government forces in mid-July, and no aid has entered the area since.

International aid provisions have been exhausted and other food supplies are dwindling, meaning many residents are surviving on a single meal a day.

Violence has continued elsewhere in the country alongside the Aleppo fighting, with at least 72 people killed in air strikes and barrel bomb attacks across the northwestern province of Idlib on Sunday, the Observatory said.

Most of those killed died in air strikes on the towns of Maaret al-Numan and Kafr Nabal, the monitor said, adding that those strikes appeared to have been carried out by Russia.

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U.S.-backed moderate rebels' loss of the eastern half of Syria's largest city Aleppo to Russian-backed government forces would be a defeat for President Barack Obama's efforts to promote democracy and defeat terrorism in the Middle East, U.S. officials conceded on Monday.

Their grim assessment reflected the expectation that the last rebel-held districts of Aleppo, where tens of thousands of civilians are trapped, will soon fall to the Syrian Army supported by Russia, Iran, and Shiite Muslim militias from Iraq, Lebanon and elsewhere."The fall of eastern Aleppo will confront the United States with the reality that supporting a moderate opposition with any hope of becoming the future government of Syria is no longer a hope," said Paul Pillar, a former senior U.S. intelligence analyst.

The defeat would leave President-elect Donald Trump with less influence over the course of the more than five-year-long civil war that is likely to grind on, fueling greater instability, violent extremism, refugee flows and regional rivalries, the officials said.

The loss by the moderate rebels would be a major victory for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, securing his grip on all of Syria's main cities and most of the south, central spine and western flank bordering the Mediterranean.

It also would vindicate Russian President Vladimir Putin's bet that he could save Moscow's longtime ally Assad by intervening in September 2015 with airpower, long-range artillery, military advisers and other support.

Russia on Monday said it would start talks with the United States on a rebel withdrawal from eastern Aleppo, a step the U.S. official said Washington would likely embrace to save lives.

"Who won? Putin, the Iranians and Assad. Who lost? We did, and Jordan (where the CIA trained and armed moderate rebels), especially. The Saudis and Gulf states," said one U.S. official, who like others who spoke to Reuters, requested anonymity.

As Obama prepares to leave office on Jan. 20, his policies in the Islamic world have suffered a series of setbacks.

His hopes to bring peace to Israelis and Palestinians have been dashed. He pulled U.S. troops out of Iraq by the end of 2011, but they are back in limited numbers helping the government combat Islamic State fighters. In Afghanistan, the Taliban is retaking territory where U.S. and allied forces had defeated them. Libya, where the Obama administration led "from behind" to oust Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, is in chaos.

'Aleppo falls, but the war goes on'

Syria, though, is the clearest American defeat. Some U.S. officials spoke bitterly of Obama's decision not to intervene more forcefully in a war that has claimed more than 500,000 lives, forced millions from their homes and unleashed waves of refugees into neighboring states and Europe.

While Obama provided some support to moderate rebel factions, it was never enough to achieve the U.S. goal of forcing Assad and his Russian and Iranian backers to negotiate his replacement by a government of national unity, they said.

The moderate opposition's defeat also confirms the return of Moscow as a major regional powerbroker, a status it has not enjoyed since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union.

"In the end, the Russians didn't have an interest in ending the war," said one U.S. official of Washington's effort to craft a diplomatic solution with Moscow. "They wanted to win it."

Pillar said he doubted that a negotiated outcome was ever attainable.

"There was never enough of a political culture or base for the so-called moderate opposition to become strong enough . . . before Russian intervention or after," said Pillar.

But with Assad hampered by manpower shortages, the civil war that began after he crushed peaceful protests in 2011 will go on, compelling the continued involvement of Russia and the Syrian leader's other allies.

"Aleppo falls, but the war goes on," said the first U.S. official.

Will Al Qaeda rebound?

He and other current and former U.S. officials argued that rebels who escape Aleppo would keep fighting, with some likely joining groups such as Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, formerly known as the Nusra Front, which Washington regards as al Qaeda's Syrian branch.

"The guys who are going to get out are going to fight guerrilla-style. They are going to join Nusra ... the Arabs are going to continue to fund the opposition," said the U.S. official. "They are not going to forget about it just because we have."

Other U.S. officials warned that the conflict could escalate as flagging U.S. support for Assad's opponents could prompt Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey to intensify their military aid to rebel groups.

A second official, reflecting concerns shared by numerous others, said Saudi Arabia could funnel more lethal weapons to opposition factions, which raises the possibility that they eventually could be turned against Western targets.

"We've been pretty good at keeping stuff out of there so terrorists can't get their hands on it, but there's no reason for the Saudis to heed our warnings anymore," he said.

Meanwhile, the fall of eastern Aleppo will provide a major boost to Shi'ite Iran, Sunni Muslim Saudi Arabia's main regional rival, whose elite Islamic Republic Guard Corps has suffered significant casualties fighting for Assad.

By helping secure Assad, Iran will preserve the pipeline through which it ships missiles and other weapons to Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shi'ite militia movement that also has fought for Damascus, to use against Israel.

"The Assad family is the longest standing strategic partner of Iran in the entire Middle East," said a third U.S. official. "Syria is the forward operating base against Israel, the conduit to Hezbollah, and an Iranian-friendly island in the Arab lands."

(Reporting by Jonathan Landay and Arshad Mohammed; Additional reporting by Yeganeh Torbati; Editing by John Walcott and Grant McCool)

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BEIRUT/GENEVA (Reuters) - Syria's army and allies closed in on areas near Aleppo's Old City on Tuesday, looking closer than ever to achieving their most important victory of the five year civil war by driving rebels out of their last urban stronghold.

Rebels said on Tuesday they would never abandon Aleppo, after reports that U.S. and Russian diplomats were preparing to meet to discuss the surrender and evacuation of insurgents from territory they have held for years.

Russia said its Syrian government allies had taken control of five more districts of Aleppo, and had now seized 35 districts from the rebels during an advance that has changed the course of the conflict.

The government now appears closer to victory than at any point since 2012, the year after rebels took up arms to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad in a war that has killed hundreds of thousands of people, made more than half of Syrians homeless and created the world's worst refugee crisis.

The Syrian Foreign Ministry said it would accept no truce at this point in Aleppo, should any outside parties try to negotiate one. Russia and China vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution on Monday calling for a weeklong ceasefire. Moscow said rebels used such pauses in the past to reinforce.

Rebel-held districts of Aleppo, reduced to a few kilometers across, where tens of thousands of civilians are trapped, looks set to fall. The United Nations, whose staff are restricted to government-controlled areas of the city, on Tuesday described "a very disastrous situation in eastern Aleppo".

"There has been heavy shelling on us, there are massacres (of civilians), there's no electricity and little internet access," said Abu Youssef, a resident of one of the areas still held by the fighters.

Damascus and Moscow have been calling on rebels to withdraw from the city, disarm and accept safe passage out, a procedure that has been carried out in other areas where rebels abandoned besieged territory in recent months.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said talks with the United States on the withdrawal of rebels from Aleppo would begin in Geneva on Tuesday evening or Wednesday morning.

A U.S. official told Reuters Washington would embrace the talks as a step to save lives.

But rebels have told U.S. officials they will not withdraw, and said there had been no more formal contact with Washington on the topic since then.

"The Americans asked if we wanted to leave or to stay ... we said this is our city, and we will defend it," Zakaria Malahifji, a Turkey-based official for the Fastaqim rebel group, told Reuters on Tuesday.

The Cold War-era superpowers have backed opposing sides in the war, but Russia has intervened far more openly and decisively, joining Iran as well as Iraqi and Lebanese Shi'ite groups to back Assad.

Some of the groups fighting in eastern Aleppo have received support in a U.S.-backed military aid program to rebels deemed moderate by the West. However, this has been minimal compared to massive Russian air support to aid Assad's government, which has turned the tide of the war in his favor over the past year.

The army said it had taken over areas to the east of the Old City including al-Shaar, Marja and Karm al-Qaterji, bringing them closer to cutting off another pocket of rebel control.

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said al-Shaar and some other areas had been taken, but did not immediately confirm the takeover of all the areas announced by the army. A Turkey-based rebel official denied al-Shaar had been taken but said fighting continued in the neighborhood.

'We will defend it'

The rebels' loss of the eastern half of Aleppo, Syria's largest city before the war, would be the biggest victory of the conflict so far for Assad, securing his grip on all Syria's main cities.

It would also be a success for President Vladimir Putin who intervened to save Moscow's ally in September 2015 with air strikes, and for Shi'ite Iran, whose elite Islamic Republic Guard Corps has suffered casualties fighting for Assad.

U.N. official Jens Laerke said: "Winter is approaching, it's already getting very, very cold so that has come up as a priority need ... Food is running out, the little food that is available is being sold at extremely inflated prices."

While rebels have said they will not leave, one opposition official, who declined to be identified, conceded they may have no alternative for the sake of civilians who have been under siege for five months and faced relentless government assaults.

Insurgents, meanwhile, have fought back ferociously inside Aleppo. Some of the fighting took place within a kilometer of the ancient citadel, a large fortress built on a mound, and around the historic Old City.

With narrow alleyways, big mansions and covered markets, the ancient city of Aleppo became a UNESCO heritage site in 1986. Many historic buildings have been destroyed in the fighting.

'Useful Syria' and 'Daeshistan'

Apart from their support for rebels fighting against Assad, Western countries are also taking part in a U.S.-led air campaign against Islamic State, the Sunni Muslim militant group which broke away from other anti-Assad groups to proclaim a caliphate in territory in Syria and neighboring Iraq.

Moscow says helping Assad is the best way to defeat Islamic State. Western countries say the group gains strength from the fury unleashed by Assad's military crackdown on his enemies.

France said on Tuesday that Russia's strategy of helping Assad to divide the country would cement a radicalized Islamist threat within Syria and create lasting regional chaos.

"There is a logic of total war with incredible brutality of the Assad regime that aims at conquering useful Syria. It's a dramatic situation that will only get worse," French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault told RFI radio.

France, a staunch backer of the anti-Assad opposition, will convene foreign ministers of like-minded countries in Paris on Saturday to try to come up with some form of strategy in the wake of the Aleppo onslaught, although few diplomats expect anything concrete to be achieved.

"With this total war, it is the partition of Syria that is taking place with the risk that a 'Daeshistan' is created next to this useful Syria," Ayrault, said. Daesh is an Arabic acronym for Islamic State.

Western countries say that even if government forces take Aleppo, they will still not be able to end the conflict, as long as millions of Syrians see the government as a brutal enemy.

"Aleppo falls, but the war goes on," said one U.S. official.

He and other current and ex-U.S. officials argued that rebels who escape Aleppo would keep fighting, with some likely joining groups such as Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, formerly known as the Nusra Front, which Washington regards as al Qaeda's Syrian branch.

Other U.S. officials warned the conflict could escalate as flagging U.S. support for Assad's opponents could prompt Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey to intensify their military aid to rebel groups.

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For the most part, Russia's incursion into Syria has met with wild success militarily.

Russia's ally, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, seems stronger than ever and the US has been relegated to a role on the sidelines of Syria's fate.

This excursion has allowed Russia to flex its military might in a number of ways that could woo over potential clients for foreign military sales, if not for one problem: Moscow's equipment keeps breaking down catastrophically. 

Earlier this week, Russia lost yet another fighter jet off its aircraft carrier the Admiral Kuznetsov. That's at least the second one since the carrier began it's first-ever combat deployment in November. Satellite photos now suggest that Russia has entirely given up on using the carrier to launch strikes.

Another huge blow to Russia's military credibility came on December 4, when footage tweeted by Rami al-Lolah showed what appeared to be Russia's vaunted S-300 missile defense system catastrophically malfunction in Syria. 

The S-300, in addition to the previously deployed S-400, were thought by experts to provide Russia with an almost impenetrable air defense zone within Syria and the Mediterranean. Even President Obama admitted that Russia's air defenses considerably limit the US's options in Syria.

Russia even went so far as to taunt the US to intervene against Assad while the S-300 was in place.

The footage below, however, suggests that the system has serious problems. 

Russia has also delivered the S-300 missile system to Iran. 

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The US was shut out of a new round of negotiations between Russia and Syrian rebel factions hosted by Turkish officials in Ankara, a source within the Syrian opposition told Business Insider on Monday.

The opposition source, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the negotiations, said American officials were not invited to take part in the talks because of recent tensions between Turkey and the US.

"The US is totally out of these talks," this person said. "And they're pretty angry about it."

The State Department would neither confirm nor deny that the US had been shut out of the talks. But an official pushed back against the notion that the Obama administration was vexed by the Turkey-brokered negotiations.

"We have seen reports of talks taking place between Russians and Syrian rebels, and we would welcome any genuine efforts to ease the suffering of the Syrian people, particularly in Aleppo, which has endured so much hardship in recent months," a State Department official told Business Insider on Tuesday.

The official also said that US representatives are "deeply engaged" with various partners on Syria.

"The US remains deeply engaged with the Turks, Russians, Saudis, and Qataris, our European allies, and the opposition in Syria," the official said. "Secretary Kerry met with [Russian] Foreign Minister [Sergey] Lavrov and Special Envoy [Staffan] de Mistura in Rome Friday, and has meetings with multilateral partners in Europe this week."

The State Department announced in October that the US was severing its bilateral channels with Russia over Syria amid Russia's "intensified attacks against civilian areas," aid workers, and hospitals in Aleppo. Kerry has continued to meet and speak regularly with Lavrov about Syria since then, however.

Mikhail Bogdanov, Russia's deputy foreign minister, did not say last week whether Russian officials were negotiating with Syrian opposition factions in Ankara.

"We need no mediators with the Syrian opposition. We have direct contacts," he told the Russian news agency TASS.

Among those present at the Ankara talks, according to the opposition source, were representatives from the Islamist rebel coalition Ahrar al-Sham. The Islamist al-Zenki rebel faction, which received US-made anti-tank missiles between 2014 and 2015, was also present — at Russia's invitation, according to The Telegraph.

The talks have been aimed at securing a deal to deliver humanitarian aid to eastern Aleppo — the Syrian city that has been besieged and under relentless aerial bombardment for more than three weeks — in exchange for the evacuation of extremists groups like the former Al Qaeda affiliate Jabhat Fateh al-Sham.

"Russia has indicated it'd be willing to accept aid access and local council control of Aleppo's east in exchange for JFS's withdrawal," Charles Lister, a Syria researcher with close ties the opposition, tweeted on Saturday.

Separate negotiations between Russia and the US were apparently underway last week to evacuate rebel groups from Aleppo, allowing civilians to stay and receive humanitarian aid. But on Tuesday, Lavrov said from Moscow that "those who refuse to leave of their own accord will be wiped out."

"There is no other solution," he said.

The US has also been negotiating with rebel groups inside Aleppo to try to negotiate the terms of their departure from the city, according to The Washington Post.

But the Free Syrian Army, a prominent coalition of rebel groups opposed to Syrian President Bashar Assad, is not considering withdrawing from eastern Aleppo, said Asaad Hanna, a political officer in the FSA.

"We will keep fighting," Hanna told Business Insider on Tuesday. "There are no preparations being made for the FSA to evacuate, and civilians haven't asked us to either. They feel they need protection from the [Iran-backed] militias and Hezbollah."

Forces backing Assad, including Iranian-led Shia militias and Lebanese Hezbollah fighters, took back roughly 40% of the rebels' territory in eastern Aleppo last week amid heavy airstrikes from Russian and Syrian warplanes.

Turkey, echoing a proposal put forward by the UN last week, has been urging Russia to stop the bombing long enough for the 100 to 400 JFS fighters in eastern Aleppo to exit the city so that they would no longer be embedded with more moderate rebel groups and civilians.

Amid thawing relations with Turkey, Russia — which believes there are thousands, and not hundreds, of JFS fighters in the city — was considering the request.

As of Tuesday, however, a deal had still not been finalized. The talks are expected to continue throughout the week.

Further complicating the negotiations is the feeling that Russia, which changed the tide of the war when it intervened on behalf of Assad in October 2015, may be losing influence in Aleppo.

"The Russians would prefer to have a cease-fire to help their relations with Turkey and show they are interested in peace, but the regime and the Iranians, they don't care," Bassam Barabandi, a former Syrian diplomat who is now a political adviser to the opposition High Negotiations Committee, told The Guardian last week.

"They want to take all of Aleppo," Barabandi said. "For the Russians, failing to achieve a cease-fire in Aleppo will show just how weak they are."

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BEIRUT (Reuters) - A war monitor said on Wednesday the Syrian army had seized control of all parts of the Old City of Aleppo which had been held by rebels, part of an advance which has seen insurgents lose around two thirds of their main urban stronghold over the past two weeks.

The Syrian army and allied forces began to enter the Old City on Tuesday, and are looking closer than ever to achieving their most important victory of the five-year-old civil war by driving rebels out of the besieged eastern sector of the city.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the army advance on Tuesday and overnight, which was supported by heavy air strikes and shelling, caused insurgents to withdraw from the historic Old City, including from the area around the historic Umayyad Mosque.

A Turkey-based official with one of the rebel factions told Reuters government forces had taken part of the Old City, but not all of it.

A military source confirmed to Reuters on Wednesday that the Syrian army had entered Aleppo's Old City.

Restoring full control over Aleppo, Syria's most populous city before the war, would be a major prize for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the country's multi-sided conflict.

The war has killed hundreds of thousands of people, made more than half of Syrians homeless and created the world's worst refugee crisis.

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Syrian rebels in Aleppo city called Wednesday for an immediate five-day truce and the evacuation of civilians to other opposition-held territory in the northern province, a statement said.

The initiative, which comes after government forces seized three-quarters of the former rebel bastion in east Aleppo, was approved by all factions in the city, a representative from one group told AFP.

It calls for an "immediate five-day humanitarian ceasefire" as well as the UN-supervised evacuation of people requiring urgent medical care, who it says number around 500 people.

And it calls for "the evacuation of civilians who wish to leave besieged east Aleppo to the northern Aleppo province countryside," where rebels still hold pockets of territory.

It rules out the evacuation of civilians to neighbouring Idlib province, where many civilians and surrendering rebels have taken refuge after leaving territory recaptured by the government elsewhere in the country.

"Idlib province is no longer a safe area because of Russian and regime bombardment," it said. The initiative makes no mention of the fate of the rebels remaining in the city, who have said previously they will not evacuate.

Instead, it calls for "negotiations on the future of the city" to begin after the "easing of the humanitarian situation in east Aleppo". 

Yasser al-Youssef of the Nureddin al-Zinki rebel group confirmed that the statement had been approved by all factions in east Aleppo, including Fateh al-Sham, the former Al-Qaeda affiliate previously known as Al-Nusra Front.

At least 80,000 people have already fled eastern neighbourhoods for territory controlled by the government or Kurds elsewhere in the city, according to a monitor.

More have fled south, to remaining rebel-held areas in the city. East Aleppo fell to rebels in 2012 and has been under government siege since mid-July, with international aid now exhausted and food supplies limited.

More than 250,000 civilians were estimated to be in east Aleppo before the latest government offensive began in mid-November. Figures for the number of rebels in the east before the offensive began range between around 8,000 to 15,000.

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BERLIN (Reuters) - The leaders of six major Western nations called on Wednesday for an immediate ceasefire in the Syrian city of Aleppo and condemned Russia and Iran for supporting the Syrian government.

"The most urgent goal remains an immediate ceasefire so that the United Nations can bring humanitarian aid to people in East Aleppo," said the leaders of Germany, France, Italy, the United States, Canada and Britain in a statement released in Berlin. 

They said the Syrian government must agree to a four-point plan put forward by the U.N. "We urge the Syrian regime to do this immediately to end the terrible situation in Aleppo; we demand Russia and Iran to exercise their influence to make this happen."

Adding that there must be no impunity for individuals who commit war crimes, they urged the U.N. to collect evidence to bring individuals to justice. "We are ready to consider additional restrictive measures against individuals or institutions that act for the Syrian regime or in its name."

(Reporting by Madeline Chambers; Editing by Caroline Copley)

SEE ALSO: How Iran helped create a 'kill box' around ISIS' last stronghold in Iraq

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BAGHDAD/ERBIL, Iraq (Reuters) — In the early days of the assault on Islamic State in Mosul, Iran successfully pressed Iraq to change its battle plan and seal off the city, an intervention which has since shaped the tortuous course of the conflict, sources briefed on the plan say.

The original campaign strategy called for Iraqi forces to close in around Mosul in a horseshoe formation, blocking three fronts but leaving open the fourth - to the west of the city leading to Islamic State territory in neighboring Syria.

That model, used to recapture several Iraqi cities from the ultra-hardline militants in the last two years, would have left fighters and civilians a clear route of escape and could have made the Mosul battle quicker and simpler.

But Tehran, anxious that retreating fighters would sweep back into Syria just as Iran's ally President Bashar al-Assad was gaining the upper hand in his country's five-year civil war, wanted Islamic State crushed and eliminated in Mosul.

The sources say Iran lobbied for Iranian-backed Popular Mobilization fighters to be sent to the western front to seal off the link between Mosul and Raqqa, the two main cities of Islamic State's self-declared cross-border caliphate.

That link is now broken. For the first time in Iraq's two-and-half-year, Western-backed drive to defeat Islamic State, several thousand militants have little choice but to fight to the death, and 1 million remaining Mosul citizens have no escape from the front lines creeping ever closer to the city center.

"If you corner your enemy and don’t leave an escape, he will fight till the end," said a Kurdish official involved in planning the Mosul battle.

"In the west, the initial idea was to have a corridor ... but the Hashid (Popular Mobilisation) insisted on closing this loophole to prevent them going to Syria," he told Reuters.

The battle for Mosul is the biggest in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion of 2003. In all, around 100,000 people are fighting on the government side, including Iraqi soldiers and police, "peshmerga" troops of the autonomous Kurdish region and fighters in the Popular Mobilisation units. A U.S.-led international coalition is providing air and ground support.

Iraqi army commanders have repeatedly said that the presence of civilians on the battlefield has complicated and slowed their seven-week-old operation, restricting air strikes and the use of heavy weapons in populated areas.

They considered a change in strategy to allow civilians out, but rejected the idea because they feared that fleeing residents could be massacred by the militants, who have executed civilians to prevent them from escaping other battles. Authorities and aid groups would also struggle to deal with a mass exodus.

Kill box

Planning documents drawn up by humanitarian organizations before the campaign, seen by Reuters, show they prepared camps in Kurdish-controlled areas of Syria for around 90,000 refugees expected to head west out of Mosul.

"Iran didn't agree and insisted that no safe corridor be allowed to Syria," said a humanitarian worker. "They wanted the whole region west of Mosul to be a kill box."

Hisham al-Hashemi, an Iraqi analyst on Islamist militants who was briefed on the battle plan in advance, also said it initially envisaged leaving one flank open.

"The first plan had the shape of a horseshoe, allowing for the population and the militants to retreat westward as the main thrust of the offensive came from the east," he said.

About a week before the launch of the campaign, Lebanese Shi'ite Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, a close ally of Iran, accused the United States of planning to allow Islamic State a way out to Syria.

"The Iraqi army and popular forces must defeat it in Mosul, otherwise, they will be obliged to move to eastern Syria in order to fight the terrorist group," he said. Hezbollah is fighting in support of Assad in Syria.

Hashid spokesman Karim al-Nuri denied that Tehran was behind the decision to deploy the Shi'ite fighters west of Mosul.

"Iran has no interest here. The majority of these statements are mere analysis - they are simply not true," he said.

Nevertheless, securing territory west of Mosul by the Iranian-backed militias has other benefits for Iran's allies, by giving the Shi'ite fighters a launchpad into neighboring Syria to support Assad.

If Islamic State is defeated in Syria and Iraq, Tehran's allies would gain control of an arc of territory stretching from Iran itself across the Middle East to Lebanon and the Mediterranean coast.

Russian pressure

Iran was not the only country pressing for the escape to be closed west of Mosul. Russia, another powerful Assad ally, also wanted to block any possible movement of militants into Syria, said Hashemi. The Russian defence ministry did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

One of Assad's biggest enemies, France, was also concerned that hundreds of fighters linked to attacks in Paris and Brussels might escape. The French have contributed ground and air support to the Mosul campaign.

A week after the campaign was launched, French President Francois Hollande said any flow of people out of Mosul would include "terrorists who will try to go further, to Raqqa in particular".

Still, the battle plan did not foresee closing the road to the west of Mosul until Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi agreed in late October to dispatch the Popular Mobilisation militias.

"The government agreed to Iran's request, thinking that it would take a long time for the Hashid to get to the road to Syria, and during that time the escape route would be open and the battle would still proceed as planned," Hashemi said.

The Hashid move to cut the western corridor was announced on Oct. 28, 11 days after the start of the wider Mosul campaign. Fighters made swift progress, sweeping up from a base south of Mosul to seal off the western route out of the city.

Abadi "was surprised to see them reaching the road in just a few days," Hashemi said. "The battle has taken a different shape since then - no food, no fuel is reaching Mosul and Daesh (Islamic State) fighters are bent on fighting to the end."

Iraq stronghold

Once the Iraqi Shi'ite militia advance west of Mosul had begun, Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi told his followers there could be no retreat from the city where he first proclaimed his caliphate in July, 2014.

Those tempted to flee should "know that the value of staying on your land with honor is a thousand times better than the price of retreating with shame," Baghdadi said in an audio recording released five days after the Shi'ite militias announced they were moving to cut off the last route out.

Since then his fighters have launched hundreds of suicide car bombs, mortar barrages and sniper attacks against the advancing forces, using a network of tunnels under residential areas and using civilians as human shields, Iraqi soldiers say.

A senior U.S. officer in international coalition which is supporting the campaign said that waging war amidst civilians would always be tough, but the Baghdad government was best placed to decide on strategy.

"They've got 15 years of war (experience)... I can't think of anyone more calibrated to make that decision and as a result that why as a coalition we supported the government of Iraq's decision," Brigadier General Scott Efflandt, deputy commanding general in the coalition, told Reuters.

"The opening and closing of that corridor, hypothetically, realistically, did not fundamentally change the plans of the battle," he added. "It changes how we prosecute the fight, but that does not necessarily make it easier or harder."

But the Kurdish official was less sanguine, saying the battle for Mosul was now "more difficult" and could descend into a long drawn out siege similar to those seen in Syria.

It could "turn Mosul into Aleppo," he said.

(Reporting by Patrick Markey and Maher Chmaytelli in Erbil and Dominic Evans in Baghdad; additional reporting by John Irish in Paris and Tatiana Ustinova in Moscow; writing by Dominic Evans; editing by Peter Graff)

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GENEVA (Reuters) - The United States and Russia are "poles apart" in trying to agree the terms for evacuating people from besieged east Aleppo in Syria, U.N. Syria humanitarian adviser Jan Egeland said on Thursday.

Five months of negotiations over aid plans have all failed and produced "nothing", Egeland said, adding it was up to the United States and Russia to try to coordinate a deal.

As he spoke in Geneva, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said after talks in Hamburg with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov he was "hopeful" about reaching an agreement with Moscow over Aleppo, but added he was awaiting "certain feedback and input".

"The whole point of having co-chairs is that they are pulling together and they haven't been for quite some time," Egeland told reporters after a weekly Syria humanitarian meeting of countries with influence in the war.

Opposition groups in eastern Aleppo previously gave mixed signals on how to organize evacuations, but now have dropped their conditions and are simply asking for a pause in the fighting to allow people to leave, Egeland added.

Forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad have captured the majority of east Aleppo's territory in the past 10 days, but most of the zone's 250,000-275,000 civilians and about 8,000 rebels are still thought to be trapped in the siege.

"Very many are now crammed together, we think, in the remaining area, which may be only 25 percent of what it was in early November," Egeland said.

The United Nations has said it estimates about 33,000 people have been displaced in the past 10 days, including about 20,000 going into government-held areas. Egeland said Syrian authorities say they have registered 30,000 in their areas.

Humanitarian corridors

Russia has been pressing for rebels and their families to be evacuated to the rebel-held town of Idlib, but the rebels have said evacuees should go to northern Aleppo province.

Egeland said the local council in Idlib had informed the United Nations the town could not receive any more people because it was already too full of displaced people and there was too much fighting going on.

Russia has said it wants eastern Aleppo's citizens to leave via four humanitarian corridors, although it will not let food go in to supply the hungry population.

Egeland said Russia had been told during the closed-door U.N. meeting that the creation of a humanitarian corridor meant a pause in the fighting.

"Russia said they will definitely be discussing with us how to organize the evacuations but they are not any more promising any pause (in fighting)," he said.

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Tom Miles and Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA (Reuters) - The United States and Russia must broker an evacuation from east Aleppo, U.N. Syria humanitarian adviser Jan Egeland said on Thursday, as a local politician warned that 150,000 people there faced "extermination".

Five months of negotiations over aid plans have produced "nothing", Egeland said, and it was up to the United States and Russia to try to coordinate a deal.

"The member states that are supposed to help us get access to civilians in the crossfire are poles apart in how they regard what is happening in Syria," he told reporters after a weekly Syria humanitarian meeting led by the United States and Russia.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said after talks in Hamburg with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov he was "hopeful" about reaching an agreement but he was awaiting "certain feedback and input".

Opposition groups in eastern Aleppo are simply asking for a pause in the fighting to allow people to leave, with no strings attached, Egeland said.

Russia wants eastern Aleppo's citizens to leave via four humanitarian corridors, although it will not let food go in to supply the hungry population.

"Russia said they will definitely be discussing with us how to organize the evacuations, but they are not any more promising any pause (in fighting)," Egeland said.

More than 800 people have been killed and 3,000-3,500 wounded in the past 26 days, while those still trapped await an effective death sentence and needed safe passage, Aleppo's council president Brita Haji Hassan said.

"Today 150,000 people are threatened with extermination," he said.

A UNICEF volunteer was shot dead in a "child-friendly space" and a mortar hit another U.N. location, with no casualties, but both sites temporarily suspended work, the U.N. said.

Nearly 150 sick and disabled civilians were evacuated overnight from a hospital in Aleppo's Old City, the first major medical evacuation, the International Committee of the Red Cross said.

The U.N. described east Aleppo's health situation as "catastrophic".

Some 1,500 people need medical evacuation, including 500 "seriously wounded", said Tawfik Chamaa of the Union of Syrian Medical Relief Organizations.

The U.N. estimates about 33,000 people have been displaced in the past 10 days, including about 20,000 going into government-held areas. But Syria's government says 30,000 have been registered in government-held zones alone.

Russia wants rebels and their families to be evacuated to the rebel-held town of Idlib, but the rebels want evacuees to go to northern Aleppo province.

Egeland said the local council in Idlib had informed the United Nations the town could not receive any more people because it was already too full of displaced people.

(Reporting by Tom Miles and Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Tom Heneghan)

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