Aleppo, Syria: Several thousand people left the rebel enclave of Aleppo on Monday, raising hope for many others still stranded as Russia eased its objections to sending UN observers to oversee the evacuations.

Brokered by rivals Turkey and Russia, the complex deal will eventually see President Bashar al-Assad’s forces exert full control over Syria’s battered second city.

Early Monday, convoys carrying more than 3,000 people crossed the front line headed for rebel-held territory elsewhere in northern Syria, after around 350 people got out during the night.

They were the first departures since Friday when the government suspended evacuations, insisting that people also be allowed to leave two northwestern villages under rebel siege.

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, around 500 people left in a dawn convoy out of Fuaa and Kafraya.

A medic said the latest evacuees from Aleppo were in a ‘terrible state’ after their departure was delayed for hours in temperatures well below freezing, compounding their plight from months of siege and bombardment by the army.

Ahmad al-Dbis, who heads a team of doctors and volunteers coordinating evacuations, saw dozens of buses arrive at the staging ground west of Aleppo.

He said they were in ‘a very bad state after waiting for more than 16 hours’ at a regime checkpoint without being allowed off the buses.

‘They hadn’t eaten, they had nothing to drink, the children had caught colds, they were not even able to go to the toilet,’ Dbis said.

Evacuees ‘been through hell’

Dbis described families wrapped in several layers of coats getting off the buses, which then headed back to Aleppo in readiness to bring out more.

A young boy bit into an apple as aid workers distributed bottled water to his family.

Among the evacuees was seven-year-old Bana al-Abed, whose Twitter account had offered a tragic account of Syria’s nearly six-year war.

The Humanitarian Relief Foundation (IHH), a Turkish NGO working in Syria, said that Bana was likely to be transferred to a displacement camp in the northwest province of Idlib.

‘The people we are welcoming have been through hell—the level of trauma they have experienced is impossible to describe or comprehend,’ said Casey Harrity of the international NGO Mercy Corps.

Residents of east Aleppo—a rebel bastion since 2012 -- had lived under four months of suffocating siege when Syria’s army began its blistering assault in mid-November to retake the whole city.

In an 11^th-hour deal, regime ally Moscow and rebel supporter Ankara agreed on the evacuation of thousands of civilians and fighters from the last remaining opposition-held pocket in Aleppo.

Around 8,500 people left the eastern districts on the first day of evacuations, but Syria’s government suspended operations on Friday.

The main obstacle to a resumption had been the dispute over how many people would be evacuated in parallel from Fuaa and Kafraya.

On Sunday, rebels attacked buses sent to bring people out of the two Shiite-majority villages, killing one of the drivers.

But the deal appeared to be back on Monday morning, with 10 buses leaving Fuaa and Kafraya almost simultaneously with those leaving Aleppo. 

A rebel representative said that hundreds of people would also be evacuated from Zabadani and Madaya, two rebel towns near the Lebanese border under siege by the army, as part of the deal.

Iran’s official news agency IRNA said the foreign ministers of Russia, Turkey and Iran would meet in Moscow on Tuesday to discuss the situation.

UN to vote ‘unanimously’

Moscow, which has carried out an air war in support of the Damascus regime since September last year, had threatened to veto a UN Security Council draft resolution calling for monitors to oversee the protection of civilians.

But after four hours of closed-door consultations on Sunday it gave the French-drafted text its guarded support.

US ambassador Samantha Power anticipated member states would approve it ‘unanimously’ at 1400 GMT.

Families have been sheltering at night in freezing temperatures in bombed out apartment blocks in Aleppo’s Al-Amiriyah district, the departure point for evacuations.

An AFP reporter visited a hospital where patients lay on floors with no food or water and with almost no heating.

A physiotherapist, Mahmud Zaazaa, said only ‘three doctors, a pharmacist and three nurses’ remained in the rebel enclave.

An official said more than half of Aleppo’s buildings had been destroyed or seriously damaged since the rebels overran the east in summer 2012.

UN envoy Staffan de Mistura estimated that as of Thursday around 40,000 civilians and perhaps as many as 5,000 opposition fighters remained in Aleppo’s rebel enclave.