More than 3,000 Syrians were expected to be evacuated yesterday from four areas as part of a population transfer that was briefly stalled the day before by a deadly blast that killed scores of people, a lot of them government supporters.
The death toll from the bomb attack on a crowded bus convoy outside Aleppo has reached at least 126 - including the dozens of children - in the deadliest such incident in Syria in nearly a year, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said.
The United Nations did not oversee the transfer deal of the villages of Foua and Kfraya, besieged by the rebels, and Madaya and Zabadani, encircled by the government.
Syria's main armed opposition condemned the bombing, with groups fighting under the banner of the Free Syrian Army saying it was a "treacherous terrorist attack".
Video shown on state television showed charred buses parked on the side of a road.
State TV al-Ikhbariya said the attack was the result of a vehicle bomb carrying food aid to be delivered to the evacuees in the rebel-held area and accused rebel groups of carrying it out. Rebels say they are being forced to relocate through bombardment and siege.
Government evacuees had been waiting under rebel guard when the bomb went off.
The blast, carried out by a suicide bomber driving a booby-trapped potato truck, rocked the rebel-held Rashideen area in the countryside of Aleppo province, where buses carrying 5,000 pro-government Shiite people were waiting the reactivation of a deal created to secure their transportation to government-controlled area in Aleppo.
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The Observatory, which relies on a network of sources inside Syria to monitor the conflict, said hundreds of people were also wounded in the blast.
The explosion happened as both sets of evacuees were stopped in separate locations outside Aleppo.
'I didn't know what was happening, all I could hear was people crying and shouting, ' she said.
Pope Francis on Sunday also urged an end to the war in Syria as he presided over the traditional Easter mass in Rome.
The Shiite people reached the rebel-held town of Rashideen, while the rebels reached the government-controlled Ramouseh crossing in Aleppo. They were evacuating under a deal contingent on residents of two pro-rebel towns being allowed to evacuate.
The Observatory said after the bombing that the evacuation process had resumed, but it was not immediately clear on Sunday if convoys had restarted their journeys.
The blast puts the four-town evacuation deal in doubt.
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