More than 50,000 civilians have joined a growing exodus from east Aleppo, a human rights monitor has said, as the UN security council prepares to hold emergency talks on fighting in the Syrian city.



As government forces pressed an assault in the divided city, regime artillery fire killed at least 21 civilians in the east on Wednesday morning, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Civilians have poured out of the rebel-held east in recent days, with parents carrying children and the young pushing the old in wheelchairs or makeshift carts as they fled.

Some have arrived in government-held or Kurdish-controlled territory with overstuffed suitcases and bags of their possessions, but others have come empty-handed, with only the clothes on their backs.

In the newly recaptured neighbourhood of Jabal Badro, hundreds of people massed to board government buses taking people to west Aleppo.

The UN security council is to meet in an emergency session on Wednesday to hear French and UK pleas for the Syrian army to open humanitarian corridors to allow civilians to flee the city, amid reports hundreds of male residents are being rounded up and taken to unknown destinations.

Before the UN meeting in New York, the French foreign minister, Jean-Marc Ayrault, met the head of the Aleppo local council, Brita Hagi Hasan. Ayrault has warned Aleppo could turn into “the worst massacre since the second world war”.

At a briefing in Paris, Hasan said: “We ask that civilians are allowed to leave eastern Aleppo.”

The security council will also hear a briefing by video from the UN special envoy, Staffan de Mistura.

Jean-Marc Ayrault, right, greets Brita Hagi Hasan. Photograph: Ian Langsdon/EPA

It is not clear if the UN meeting can achieve anything other than ritual denunciations since Russia has vetoed five previous security council resolutions on Syria, and will have little compunction in doing so again. Russia, in common with the Syrian government, labels all the opposition forces in Aleppo as terrorists.

Government forces and allied fighters have seized a third of the rebel-held east of Aleppo since they began an operation to recapture all of the battered second city just over a fortnight ago. The loss of Aleppo would be the biggest blow for Syria’s opposition since the conflict began in March 2011.

The observatory said on Wednesday that of more than 50,000 people who fled, more than 20,000 had left for government-held neighbourhoods, with another 30,000 going to Kurdish-controlled districts.

Many others have travelled south into the remaining territory held by rebels.

“The situation of those fleeing is desperate,” said Pawel Krzysiek, the head of communications for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Syria.

Syria’s Red Crescent is offering assistance in government-held areas but does not yet have access to east Aleppo.

“I can only imagine how difficult the situation must be for people who fled into the places where aid workers and supplies are not or scarcely available,” Krzysiek said. “Our priority now is to get to all people in need.”

The government’s advance on the ground has been accompanied by heavy bombardment, with airstrikes, barrel-bomb attacks and artillery fire pounding rebel-held neighbourhoods.

On Wednesday morning, 21 civilians including two children were killed in government artillery fire on the Jubb al-Qubbeh district in east Aleppo, the observatory said.

The observatory’s head, Rami Abdurrahman, said at least eight of the dead were civilians who had fled the Tariq al-Bab neighbourhood, now a frontline between rebels and advancing government troops.

He said dozens more had been wounded in the attack and many people were still trapped under the rubble of collapsed buildings.

Syrians walk over rubble of damaged buildings as they flee clashes in eastern Aleppo. Photograph: Abdalrhman Ismail/Reuters

The monitor said nearly 300 civilians, including 33 children, had been killed in east Aleppo since the latest government assault began on 15 November. Another 48 civilians had been killed in west Aleppo, according to the monitor.

The state news agency Sana said eight civilians including two children had been killed in rebel fire on several districts in the city’s west on Wednesday.

The violence in the city has prompted international concern, though there has been little sign of a plan to intervene.

The UN rights chief, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, on Wednesday said civilians in eastern Aleppo faced “a nightmare which clearly violates the most basic norms of human rights and any shred of human decency”.

“Pounded by accelerating bombardment, deliberately deprived of food and medical care, many of them – including small children – report that they are simply waiting for death,” he said.

Dennis Ross, a former Middle East adviser to the Clinton administration, suggested in London that the Syrian civil war would continue beyond a regime capture of Aleppo, even if it put all the major urban centres under government control.

“The idea that this will be the end of it is an illusion. It is still very difficult to see a political solution as long as Assad stays,” he said. “Putin does not have any leverage over the opposition. There may be a pause, but the opposition are not going to give up.”

He predicted Qataris would continue to fund an insurgency, saying a 25,000-strong Syrian army, even with the help of Iranians and a Shia militia, could not hold the whole country.