Jane Onyanga-Omara

USA TODAY

The United Nations Security Council on Monday unanimously approved a plan to quickly send U.N. monitors to oversee evacuations from eastern Aleppo, which Syrian government forces are close to recapturing from rebels.

The vote by the 15-member council came after negotiators struck a deal with Russia, a Syrian government ally that had vetoed six previous similar resolutions. France, which drafted the proposal, agreed on the final wording on Sunday, calling it necessary to stop “mass atrocities."

The resolution now goes before the full United Nations, which has not yet scheduled a vote. The resolution calls for "adequate, neutral monitoring and direct observations from the eastern districts" of the war-torn city.

During his final press conference as secretary-general last Friday, Ban Ki-moon focused on the bloodshed in the Syrian city, saying Aleppo is now a "synonym for hell."

"We have collectively failed the people of Syria," he said. "The carnage in Syria remains a gaping hole in the global conscience."

Evacuations from eastern Aleppo, which was captured by rebels in 2012, and two rebel-held Shiite villages in northern Syria resumed Monday after delays with causes that included buses being set on fire, according to media reports.

Among those evacuated from Aleppo was Bana al-Abed, a 7-year-old girl who came to worldwide attention for tweeting about the plight of people in the besieged city, an aid official said.

Ahmad Tarakji, the president of the Syrian American Medical Society, tweeted a photo of a smiling Bana and said that she and other children had arrived in the Aleppo countryside.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group based in the United Kingdom, and Al-Mayadeen, a pan-Arab TV station, said 10 buses carrying civilians departed from the villages of Foua and Kfarya on Monday bound for government-controlled areas.

More than 2,000 sick and wounded people are due to be evacuated from the two villages. On Sunday, militants burned six empty buses that had been due to evacuate them.

Geert Cappelaere, the United Nations Children's Fund's regional director, said all 47 children who were trapped in an orphanage in eastern Aleppo were evacuated Monday, some of them in a critical condition with dehydration and injuries.

“Many vulnerable children — including other orphans and children separated from their families — still remain in east Aleppo and need immediate protection," he said in a statement.

Rami Abdurrahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said he expected the evacuations from the city to be completed Monday.

Recapturing the whole of Aleppo would be Syrian President Bashar Assad’s biggest victory in the nearly 6-year-old civil war, which has claimed an estimated 500,000 lives and forced million to flee the country.

Contributing: Alan Gomez

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