The U.N. Security Council met for urgent talks on Sunday as Syrian and Russian warplanes  pounded rebel-held east Aleppo in the worst surge of bombing to hit the devastated city in years.

Britain, France and the United States called the emergency meeting to turn up pressure on Russia and press demands that it rein in its ally Syria to halt the intense bombing campaign on Aleppo.

More than 120 rebels and dozens of their relatives on Thursday left the last rebel-held district of Syria's Homs city under a deal with the regime, the governor said. 

The White Helmets, a Syrian civil organization of emergency responders in rebel-held areas, on Thursday won the Right Livelihood Award, the jury for the Swedish human rights prize announced.

Russia's defense minister said Wednesday that Moscow was dispatching its flagship aircraft carrier to bolster its forces in the eastern Mediterranean off Syria. 

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry demanded on Wednesday that Russia force Bashar Assad's regime to ground its air force in order to revive hopes of a ceasefire in Syria's civil war.

Addressing the U.N. Security Council, including his Russian opposite number Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Kerry said efforts to find peace could yet be salvaged but only if Moscow takes responsibility for recent air strikes.

Intense air raids shook Syria's Aleppo and killed a team of medics as the U.N. Security Council held crisis talks Wednesday on reviving a failed ceasefire.

Neither Russian nor Syrian planes bombed an aid convoy in Syria's Aleppo, Moscow said Tuesday, as outrage mounted over strikes which the Red Cross said killed around 20 people.

The United Nations suspended all humanitarian convoys in Syria on Tuesday following a deadly air strike on aid trucks, as fighting intensified after the regime declared an end to a week-long truce.

Air raids and shelling pounded key battlefronts in Syria on Tuesday, as outrage mounted over a strike on an aid convoy hours after Syria's military declared an end to a week-long truce.

The raid and renewed violence across the country dimmed hopes that the fraught ceasefire negotiated by Moscow and Washington could be revived.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said he expected more aid deliveries to reach civilians in Syria on Monday but it remained to be seen if a ceasefire would hold.

The ceasefire "did pretty well last night, trucks are moving to maybe eight locations or more" to deliver aid, Kerry told reporters as he met Tunisia's foreign minister in New York.