Russia's military has announced that it will extend its planned humanitarian pause by three hours to let people leave Aleppo, Syria, at the request of humanitarian organisations.

Eight corridors will be opened on Thursday (20th October), six of which will offer civilians an exit route. The other two channels, heading in the direction of Idlib and the Turkish border, are for rebels to leave the besieged city with their weapons. The corridors will now be open for 11 hours.

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Russia's defence ministry also said the corridors will be filmed by web cameras and surveillance drones and this will be broadcast live on the ministry's website. Russian and Syrian planes will fly at least 10km (6mi) from the corridors during the operation.

"On October 20, starting at 8am, a humanitarian pause is to be introduced in Aleppo to allow civilians to escape and sick and injured people to be evacuated, and for militants to leave the eastern part of the city," said Lt. Gen. Sergey Rudskoy, as quoted by Russia Today.

Rudskoy added that Russia and Syria have not conducted any air strikes on the city since 18 October, 2016.

Despite Russia's guarantees of safety to rebels in Aleppo, the Jabhat Fateh al-Sham group (formerly al-Nusra Front) told the BBC it would not leave because it feared the Syrian forces were attempting to "cleanse" the city of Sunnis.

"We choose not to give up our people," said the statement. "We will not betray their blood and we will continue our jihad until we remove the regime and any plan against that is rejected."