MOSCOW insisted yesterday that it is keeping humanitarian corridors out of Aleppo open after accusations by the UN’s humanitarian head that warring parties were obstructing medical evacuations.

Defence Ministry spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov said that six humanitarian corridors out of eastern Aleppo continued to function “around the clock.”

People leaving through these corridors would be treated at reception centres and offered first aid and hot food, he said.

Russian and Syrian warplanes “are not approaching the city and are not carrying out attacks,” Maj-Gen Konashenkov said, adding that 48 women and children had been able to leave the previous evening.

And Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov reiterated his demand that US Secretary of State John Kerry should fulfil his pledge to ensure separation of terrorist groups from so-called moderate opposition fighters in eastern Aleppo.

He told Mr Kerry that rebel forces occupying the area had fired on civilians during the cessation of hostilities observed by Russian and Syrian government forces.

Ammar Sakkar, a military spokesman for the powerful Fastaqim rebel militia in Aleppo, denied yesterday that the government advance in south-west Aleppo, capturing the Talet Bazo hill, had been a setback for rebel forces.

He maintained that huge preparations were under way for an “epic” battle in Aleppo.

The successful operation by the Syrian army and its Lebanese Hezbollah allies to take the strategic hilltop was completed just hours after Aleppo rebels boasted that an offensive to break the government’s siege was “hours away.”

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights acknowledged that the government’s new position on the Bazo hilltop would complicate any rebel push.

Nato secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg revealed yesterday that the cold-war alliance had launched surveillance flights along Turkey’s border with Syria and Iraq last week to support international coalition efforts against Isis.

The flyovers will help the coalition “to get a better air picture,” he claimed.

Jihadi group Faylaq Al-Sham accused its fellow extremists in Jund al-Aqsa, an al-Qaida franchise, yesterday of beheading its northern Hama commander Baha’a al-Nizal near the village of Hish in the southern Idlib countryside last week.