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A suicide bomber lured children by handing out crisps before detonating a huge blast that killed at least 45 people in Syria, a witness said.

A huge explosion ripped through a convoy of around 10 buses waiting to carry thousands of civilians out of rebel-held towns near Aleppo.

The coaches were left blackened and destroyed while dozens of bodies lay both inside and outside.

Many of them were children.

Abd Habak, a videographer, captured the devastation with this image of a colleague left on his knees and in tears beside the charred body of a child.

WARNING: UPSETTING IMAGE

(Image: Twitter/Ala'a Shehabi?)

A witness told ZamanEnglish News: "A van was distributing crisps.

"Children started running after it. It then exploded."

The blast hit the Rashidin area on Aleppo's outskirts, where dozens of buses carrying mostly Shi'ite residents of two villages that are being evacuated in a deal between warring sides were waiting to enter the city.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 24 were killed.

A senior rebel official said 20 rebels who guarded the buses were killed as well as dozens of passengers.

(Image: @TahrirSy/Twitter) (Image: @TahrirSy/Twitter)

White Helmets, a volunteer rescue organisation, put the death toll over 100.

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported casualties, saying the explosion appeared to be caused by a bomb.

The buses had been waiting since late on Friday outside the city while the evacuation deal halted.

Syrian TV later had earlier showed dozens of buses carrying thousands children, women and men - from pro-government areas Foua and Kfraya and from opposition towns Madaya and Zabadani - parked up at separate parts of the edge of Aleppo city - as a deal to move them stalled.

The agreement is one of several over recent months that has seen President Bashar al-Assad's government take back control of areas long besieged by his forces and their allies.

(Image: @TahrirSy/Twitter)

A local resident, Ahmed Afandar, had warned: "The people are restless and the situation is disastrous."

"All these thousands of people are stuck in less than half a kilometre (500 yards)."

He said the area was walled off from all sides and there were no toilets.

"We are not moving forward or backward," he added.

The evacuees from Madaya were expected to head to rebel-held Idlib, west of Aleppo.

Food was distributed after several hours and by early afternoon the evacuees from rebel-held areas were "pressured" to sit back on their buses, Mr Afandar said.

(Image: REUTERS)

Salloum Salloum, an MP speaking on the pro-government al-Ikhbariya TV channel, said efforts are under way to resolve the problem, accusing the rebels of adding new conditions to the deal.

Rami Abdurrahman, head of the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, says the Syrian government and rebels who negotiated the deal have disagreed over the terms for the evacuation of gunmen from the towns.

An opposition representative, Ali Diab, told the pan-Arab Al-Arabiya TV that fewer armed men than agreed to were evacuated from the pro-government areas, violating the terms of the agreement.

(Image: REUTERS)

Meanwhile, an Iraqi military statement said the Syrian air force has carried out a series of air strikes against Islamic State (IS) militants inside Syria, with one killing a leading member of the group in Raqqa, the IS de facto capital.

The statement said the strikes were against IS positions in Raqqa and Deir el-Zour, and near the Iraqi border. The statement described the targets as "the biggest positions for senior terrorists".

The statement said Abu Bakir al-Habeeb al-Hakim was killed in one of the strikes, describing him as a leading member of IS in Raqqa.

(Image: REUTERS)

It said he was a militant with al-Qaida-linked groups before joining IS. It was not immediately clear if al-Hakim was the same French national US officials had said was killed in an air strike in Syria in November 2016.

Another strike hit a gathering of suicide attackers who were planning to enter Iraq, according to the statement.

At the time, the US officials said al-Hakim was believed to be linked to the 2015 attacks at the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, mentoring the brothers who gunned down the cartoonists at the French paper in 2015.

Another strike hit a gathering of suicide attackers who were planning to enter Iraq, according to the statement.