ALEPPO/BEIRUT/GENEVA: Rebel resistance in the Syrian city of Aleppo ended Tuesday after years of fighting and months of bitter siege and bombardment that culminated in a bloody retreat, as rebels agreed to withdraw in a cease-fire.

The battle of Aleppo, one of the worst of a civil war that has drawn in global and regional powers, has ended with victory for Syrian President Bashar Assad and his military coalition of Russia, Iran and regional Shiite fighters.

For rebels, their expected departure with light weapons starting Wednesday morning for opposition-held regions west of the city is a crushing blow to their hopes of ousting Assad after revolting against him during the 2011 Arab uprisings.

However, the war will still be far from over, with rebels retaining major strongholds elsewhere in Syria, and Daesh (ISIS) holding swaths of the east and recapturing the ancient city of Palmyra this week.

“Over the last hour we have received information that the military activities in east Aleppo have stopped, it has stopped,” Russian U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin told a U.N. Security Council meeting. “The Syrian government has established control over east Aleppo.”

Rebel officials said fighting would end Tuesday evening and a source in the pro-Assad military alliance said the evacuation of fighters would begin at around dawn Wednesday. A Reuters reporter in Aleppo said late Tuesday that the booms of the bombardment could no longer be heard.

Fighters and their families, along with civilians who have thrown in their lot with the rebels, will have until Wednesday evening to quit the city, a Turkish government source said Tuesday. The cease-fire was negotiated by Turkey and Russia, without U.S. involvement. A commander with the Jabhat al-Shamiya rebel group said that Aleppo was a moral victory for the rebels. “We were steadfast ... but unfortunately nobody stood with us at all,” the commander, who declined to be identified, told Reuters.

The plight of civilians has caused global outrage in the wake of a sudden series of advances by the Syrian army and its allies across the rebel enclave over the past two weeks. “We appear to be witnessing nothing less than ... a total uncompromising military victory,” U.N. Secretary-General Ban ki-moon told the U.N. Security Council Tuesday.

The U.N. earlier Tuesday voiced deep concern about reports it had received of Syrian soldiers and allied Iraqi fighters summarily shooting dead 82 people in recaptured east Aleppo districts. It accused them of “slaughter.”

“The reports we had are of people being shot in the street trying to flee and shot in their homes,” said U.N. spokesman Rupert Colville. “There could be many more.”

“They have gone from siege to slaughter,” British U.N. Ambassador Matthew Rycroft said. “Aleppo will join the ranks of those events in world history that define modern evil, that stain our conscience decades later – Halabja, Rwanda, Srebrenica and now Aleppo,” U.S. ambassador Samantha Power said.

An official with an Aleppo rebel group said the bulk of about 50,000 people was expected to be evacuated.

Salman al-Atrash, an activist, who was waiting to be evacuated with his wife and three children, said his wife and himself are wanted by the regime so they couldn’t leave with the rest of the families out of fear of being detained.

“The Syrian tragedy was boundless in the past few days. Families trying to leave east Aleppo were being shelled on the road, and yet they still kept going toward the side that is killing them, that is how difficult and unbearable the situation has gotten for people,” he told The Daily Star.

“I feel great sadness but after the huge mental stress there is a kind of relief to be leaving but I feel like we will never see Aleppo again,” he added.

Fear stalked the city’s streets. Some survivors trudged in the rain past dead bodies to the government-held west or the few districts still in rebel hands. Others stayed in their homes and awaited the Syrian army’s arrival.

For all of them, fear of arrest, conscription or summary execution added to the daily terror of bombardment. “People are saying the troops have lists of families of fighters and are asking them if they had sons with the terrorists. [They are] then either left or shot and left to die,” said Abu Malek al-Shemali in Seif al-Dawla, one of the last rebel-held districts.

Behind those fleeing was a wasteland of flattened buildings, concrete rubble and bullet-pocked walls, where tens of thousands had lived until recent days under intense bombardment even after medical and rescue services had collapsed. Dr. Ousama, who has been stuck outside Aleppo for three months, told The Daily Star that the doctors in the city’s east were working out of small makeshift medical centers, which used to be houses, and using very basic medical equipment and medicine.

“In all the countries of the world, medical services should be neutralized except here in Syria, they would be the first target,” he said.

Terrible conditions were described by city residents. Shemali, a resident in the rebel area, said dead bodies lay in the streets “with no one to bury them. Last night people slept in the streets and in buildings where every flat has several families crowded in.”

State television broadcast footage of a tide of hundreds of refugees walking along a ravaged street, wearing thick clothes against the rain and cold, many with hoods or hats pulled tight around their faces, and hauling sacks or bags of belongings.

In some recaptured areas, people were returning to their shattered homes. A woman in her 60s, who identified herself as Umm Ali said that she, her husband and her disabled daughter had no water.

They were looking after the orphaned children of another daughter killed in the bombing, she said, and were reduced to putting pots and pans in the street to collect rainwater.