MOSCOW -- Russian and Syrian warplanes halted airstrikes on Syria's besieged city of Aleppo on Tuesday in preparation for a pause in the military push that Moscow has announced for later in the week, the Russian defense minister said.
The halt in the strikes should help pave the way for militants to leave the eastern rebel-held parts of the contested city, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said.
Russian and Syrian air raids on the northern city of Aleppo were suspended at 10 a.m. Tuesday, Shoigu said. He described the suspension as a precursor for the opening of humanitarian corridors.
Moscow announced Monday a "humanitarian pause" between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. Thursday to allow civilians and militants safe passage out of the city. An estimated 250,000 people are thought to remain in the embattled quarter.
At that time, Russian and Syrian militaries will halt any offensive actions. Syrian rebels, including al-Qaida-linked militants, as well as the wounded and the sick will be allowed to leave to the neighboring rebel-held province of Idlib.
"The early halting of airstrikes is necessary to declare a 'humanitarian pause,'" Shoigu said in a televised statement. "It will ... guarantee a safe exit of civilians through six corridors and prepare for the evacuation of the ill and the wounded from the eastern part of Aleppo."
Russian President Vladimir Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said the halt was a goodwill gesture to pave the way for Thursday's pause.
"The Russian military is offering yet another chance, and we hope that our partners will allow us all to take advantage of that," Peskov said.
The United Nations said Russia has communicated plans for two eight-hour cease-fires in rebel-held parts of Aleppo over "consecutive days" this week.
Jens Laerke, spokesman for U.N.'s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said in Geneva that the agency needs assurances from all sides that fighting will stop before it can provide assistance to the city.
"We need to have assurances from all parties to the conflict," Laerke told reporters in Geneva, "not just a unilateral announcement that this will happen."
Laerke said the U.N. was not told in advance of the Russian announcement.
The Russian announcement came days after Staffan de Mistura, the U.N. special envoy for Syria, offered to escort fighters of the group formerly known as the Nusra Front -- now renamed Jabhat Fatah al-Sham -- out of eastern Aleppo to the rebel-held province of Idlib.
In Moscow, Shoigu added that Russia is "asking the countries wielding influence with the [Syrian] rebels ... to persuade their leaders to end fighting and leave the city."
He said the Syrian troops will pull back to distances allowing unimpeded exit for those carrying weapons through two corridors, including the main artery of Castello Road.
The Russian initiative also should boost talks between military experts from several nations that are set to open in Geneva on today, he added.
"Their work will be aimed first of all at separating the 'moderate opposition' from the terrorists and its withdrawal from the eastern part of Aleppo," he said.
Russia has urged the U.S. to encourage Syria's Western-backed rebels to sever ties with al-Qaida-linked militants.
De Mistura said the Fatah al-Sham fighters made up 900 of around 8,000 rebel combatants in eastern Aleppo. Rebels say there are fewer, while the Syrian government argues there are more.
The Syrian government and its allies have often referred to all rebel fighters as terrorists, while opposition fighters have said that they will not renounce tactical alliances with Fatah al-Sham without new arms or guarantees.
Deep distrust of Russia
Medical workers, residents and activists in the besieged rebel-held districts said they did not trust the Russian offer, as humanitarian groups expressed skepticism that the proposed pause would be long or solid enough to allow meaningful aid to be delivered to trapped civilians.
Mohammed Abu Rajab, an Aleppo resident, said airstrikes on the eastern neighborhoods stopped early Tuesday, just after the city had been subjected to another intense round of air raids.
"There were airstrikes throughout the night," Abu Rajab, who works at a hospital, said over the telephone.
But as the airstrikes stopped on the city, they continued as usual against nearby rebel-held villages including Anadan and Daret Azzeh. Syrian activists had no immediate word on casualties.
There was no word on whether rebel groups would halt their mortar attacks on the government-held districts of the divided city, which have killed and wounded several children in recent days. Residents of the rebel-held districts also reported that ground attacks and shelling by government forces were continuing in some areas, even as the airstrikes stopped.
Abdelkafi al-Hamdo, a schoolteacher and anti-government activist in eastern Aleppo, summed up the mistrust among his neighbors this way: "Russia kills many Syrians brutally. They pretend to be human by asking for a cease-fire. They prepare their weapons to kill others after the cease-fire. This cease-fire is not for us as Aleppo people, but this is for you respected journalists, to say Russia is reviving a cease-fire."
Physicians for Human Rights, a charity based in New York that has tracked hundreds of attacks on medical facilities during Syria's five-year conflict, a vast majority of them by pro-government forces, said that such a brief pause would do little. The group said it was more important to stop indiscriminate attacks and to lift the blockades on eastern Aleppo and other besieged areas that prevent the free movement of food, medicine and people.
"An eight-hour suspension of bombing is entirely insufficient to alleviate the suffering of east Aleppo city's quarter-million people," the group said.
"What the people of Aleppo need is an end to indiscriminate airstrikes on civilian areas, an end to the deliberate targeting of medical facilities -- including pediatric clinics and maternity wards -- and an end to the crippling siege of their city."
Merkel hints at sanctions
In Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel said sanctions against Russia over its actions in Syria should remain an option.
Merkel said she and French President Francois Hollande will discuss Syria with Putin on the sidelines of a meeting today on Ukraine in Berlin , but cautioned against expecting "miracles."
Both leaders have been sharply critical of Russia's support for the forces of Syrian President Bashar Assad.
Putin is open to discussing the situation with Syria in his meeting in Berlin, although the focus of the meeting is on Ukraine, Peskov said.
British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson told the House of Commons that "nothing is off the table" in regard to Syria, when asked about the possibility of military action, even though he acknowledged there's no appetite for that at the moment.
Also Tuesday, the United Kingdom mobilized support among diplomats in Geneva for an emergency session of the U.N. Human Rights Council, to be held Friday.
The diplomats are expected to call for an immediate end to all aerial bombardment of, and military flights over, Aleppo. A draft resolution prepared for the meeting also calls on the U.N. Commission of Inquiry on Syria to investigate and publicly identify those responsible for war crimes and human-rights violations in Aleppo.
Aleppo, Syria's largest city and once its commercial hub, has been subjected to the most intense aerial bombardment since the start of the Mideast country's conflict in 2011. In recent months, the Syrian army has pressed its offensive into the rebel-held eastern part of the city. Air raids have killed hundreds and drawn international attention.
A Russia-U.S.-brokered cease-fire collapsed last month as the Syrian army launched an offensive on eastern Aleppo under the cover of Russian warplanes.
During a meeting over the weekend co-chaired by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, foreign ministers from Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar said they would work to separate moderate opposition groups in Aleppo from Jabhat Fatah al-Sham fighters.
Lavrov said the sides had discussed "ideas" for advancing a resolution of the war and agreed to renew efforts soon.
The outcome of the weekend talks has not been made public, but there are signs that the parties are trying to reach an agreement under which the Jabhat Fatah al-Sham fighters would leave Aleppo.
Russian and Syrian officials have since embraced a proposal made earlier this month by de Mistura to allow Fatah al-Sham militants to leave Aleppo in exchange for a truce and a local administration for the eastern districts.
Rebels there, along with many residents, have rejected the offer.
Russia's announcement did not include any promises of an extended cease-fire or local administration in and around Aleppo.
U.S. State Department spokesman Mark Toner, speaking to reporters in Washington on Monday, said the Russian-Syrian pause planned for Thursday was "a bit too little, too late."
John Kirby, another State department spokesman, said Tuesday in an interview with CNN that the U.S. will monitor the situation in Syria to see if a cease-fire takes hold, but he said the U.S. isn't prepared to have any meaningful discussions with Russia until it proves it's willing to stop the bombing in Aleppo.
Peskov, Putin's spokesman, would not say if the strikes would resume after the pause, saying that depends on whether the rebels can be persuaded to cut ties with militants.
Information for this article was contributed by Vladimir Isachenkov, Bassem Mroue, Jamey Keaten and Frank Jordans of The Associated Press; by Henry Meyer, Ilya Arkhipov, Stepan Kravchenko, Thomas Penny and Toluse Olorunnipa of Bloomberg News; and by Anne Barnard, Nick Cumming-Bruce, Ivan Nechepurenko and Hwaida Saad of The New York Times.
A Section on 10/19/2016