Rebels hit back in the historic heart of Aleppo, blowing up a luxury hotel-turned-army position after tunnelling under the front line which divides the main city of northern Syria.
At least 14 soldiers and pro-government militiamen were killed in the explosion and its aftermath yesterday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
Around 1,000 rebel fighters have left the Old City of Homs under the unprecedented negotiated evacuation that began Wednesday, according to figures given to AFP by provincial governor Talal Barazi.
Barazi said they were stopped at the northern exit from the Old City, without giving a reason.
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Rami Abdel Rahman, who heads the Syrian Observatory, said Islamists were limiting entry of supplies to Zahraa and Nabol to two trucks, instead of 12 as agreed by the regime and rebels in negotiations to which they were not a party.
Barazi earlier said more than 200 fighters had been evacuated yesterday, in addition to 980 people, mostly rebels but including some women and children, bussed out of the Old City on Wednesday.
Barazi said negotiations were well advanced for the rebels to leave that neighbourhood too in the coming weeks.
He said the fighters and some civilians evacuated with them were bussed out to the opposition-held town of Dar al-Kabira, 20 kilometres north of Homs.
Government troops played football on the square housing Homs's landmark clock tower, once the scene of the city's massive anti-government protests.
A soldier climbed onto the rooftop of a house and told AFP: "This is the first time I climb up here without fearing snipers."
It is not the first deal between the government and the rebels - a number of ceasefires have been agreed on the outskirts of Damascus. But it is the first time that rebel fighters have withdrawn from an area they controlled under an accord with the government.
The Syrian government allowed the remaining rebels in Homs to pull out with their personal weapons in return for the release of 40 Alawite women and children, an Iranian woman and 30 soldiers held hostage by rebels elsewhere in Syria, a rebel spokesman said.