30,000 Flee East Aleppo, Russia Wants Humanitarian Corridors - UN

GENEVA: About 30,000 people are receiving aid after fleeing the besieged eastern zone of the Syrian city of Aleppo in the past few days, taking the total number of displaced people in the city to 400,000, U.N. special envoy Staffan de Mistura said on Thursday.

The U.N. has food for 150,000 people ready in western Aleppo but it still cannot reach roughly 200,000 who remain in the enclave, where food stocks have run out and surgery is being done in basements without anaesthetic, de Mistura's humanitarian adviser Jan Egeland said.

Syria and Russia have declined the U.N.'s request for a pause in the fighting to evacuate the estimated 400 sick and wounded needing treatment, but Russia wants to discuss the idea of setting up four humanitarian corridors, de Mistura said.