BEIRUT -- Syrian government forces swept Wednesday through Aleppo's Old City as rebel forces -- besieged and facing certain defeat -- debated when to withdraw from their shattered stronghold.
The army and allied militiamen now hold three-quarters of east Aleppo, four years after the area fell from government control.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group, said forces allied with Syrian President Bashar Assad took over the Old City after rebels withdrew south into what remains of their territory.
"The decision to liberate all of Syria has been taken, and that includes Aleppo," Assad told the state newspaper al-Watan.
As the United States and Russia prepare talks on the prospect of a rebel withdrawal, the militants now seek escape. On Wednesday, they called for civilians to be allowed to leave for the northern countryside during a five-day cease-fire.
"There's no point to the civilians staying without the protection of the Free Syrian Army," said Hamza al-Khatib, the spokesman for the civil society Committee to Save Aleppo. He said he expected about half of the remaining population would evacuate under the terms of the proposal, if given the chance.
Officials within the armed opposition, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said a much broader agreement was in the cards involving full withdrawal from what was once their most important stronghold. Activists said dozens of rebels already had fled.
In 2012, the capture of east Aleppo was seen as one of the rebels' biggest victories. It turned out to be a fatal overstretch, making this final confrontation for the former commercial capital inevitable.
The eastern districts have been under siege since July while Syrian and Russian warplanes have dropped bomb after bomb, killing hundreds of civilians.
More than 730 people have been killed in Aleppo since the start of a Nov. 15 government offensive and 80,000 have fled, the Observatory added Wednesday.
The recapture of Aleppo would mark Assad's greatest victory in Syria's 5½-year war. In comments published Wednesday, the Syrian president said victory in Aleppo would be a "huge step" toward the end.
But it comes at a huge cost. Thousands of civilians have been killed, and the recaptured districts lie in ruins, their apartment blocks shredded and infrastructure destroyed.
Inside what remains of the rebel enclave, there is a growing humanitarian crisis. Food almost has run out, and fuel stocks are so low that rescue workers say they often are unable to reach the wounded. Photographs from the area Wednesday showed several bodies piled outside a hospital.
"Even by Syrian standards, the recent bombardment and shelling have been the most intense in Aleppo," said Hanaa Singer, UNICEF's representative in Syria, in an emailed statement Wednesday.
The Syrian civil war has killed almost 500,000 people and spurred the largest refugee crisis since World War II. It also has become a proxy battleground for geopolitical rivals.
In recent months, that knotty diplomacy has focused mostly on stanching the crisis in Aleppo.
On Wednesday, Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov met in Germany for a last-ditch effort to agree on conditions that would allow the city to be evacuated. Kerry said the two would meet again this morning.
Lavrov emerged from his meeting with Kerry in Hamburg, Germany, after just over an hour, saying he had to leave for another appointment. Kerry told reporters that the two had "obviously talked about the extraordinarily dire situation in Aleppo, and we exchanged some ideas about it and we intend to reconnect in the morning to see where we are."
Ahead of the meeting, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, blamed Russia for the continuing violence.
"Diplomacy has not delivered for the people of Aleppo," she said. "It is not us that walked away from diplomacy. It is Syria and the Russian Federation."
In a joint statement, the leaders of Britain, Germany, Italy, France, Canada and the U.S. demanded that Syria's government address the humanitarian crisis by allowing U.N. aid to reach eastern Aleppo. They said the U.N. should investigate reports of war crimes committed in Syria.
"We condemn the actions of the Syrian regime and its foreign backers, especially Russia, for their obstruction of humanitarian aid," the leaders said, adding that hospitals and schools appeared to have been targeted "in an attempt to wear people down."
The Western leaders called on Syria and Russia to agree to a proposal by the United Nations for a cease-fire, humanitarian aid and talks on a transition government between the opposition and Assad. France will host a meeting Saturday in Paris for opposition supporters from Europe and the Middle East; Kerry will attend.
Information for this article was contributed by Louisa Loveluck, Andrew Roth and Zakaria Zakaria of The Washington Post and by Sarah El Deeb, Philip Issa, Josh Lederman and Angela Charlton of The Associated Press.
A Section on 12/08/2016