The agreement was a result of talks between Russia, Assad's main ally, and Turkey, a leading backer of the rebels, a Turkish government official said. The guns fell silent late on Tuesday in Aleppo. A Reuters reporter in the city said no blasts had been heard after days of near constant bombardment.
It was the culmination of two weeks of rapid advances by the Syrian army and its allies that drove insurgents back into an ever-smaller pocket of the city under intense air strikes and artillery fire.