Syrian state media has said that dozens of families, as well as some opposition fighters, have started using newly opened "humanitarian corridors" to leave rebel-held parts of Aleppo, but conflicting reports from inside the besieged city have suggested that the passages have not yet been in operation.
State media broadcast footage on Saturday purporting to show civilians, mostly women and children, boarding buses to leave eastern Aleppo, in the first reported movement of people since Russia announced a plan to open up safe passages on Thursday.
"A number" of women over the age of 40 had left, in addition to the families, and were taken to shelters, according to the state news agency SANA.
The reports, however, were later contradicted by sources in Aleppo who told Al Jazeera that the corridors had not been opened, and civilians were still coming under fire.
"Everybody that we've spoken with, when it comes to opposition activists and residents in the rebel-held areas of Aleppo, have told us that these humanitarian corridors have not been opened," Al Jazeera's Mohamed Jamjoom, reporting from Gaziantep on the Turkish side of the Syria-Turkey border, said.
"Not only they have not been opened, but they say in several of the areas ... in fact there is fighting still going on, and there are regime snipers as well that are shooting almost constantly."
An estimated 320,000 people are under government siege in Aleppo, facing acute food and medicine shortages.
