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Dozens of people trying to escape villages close to the war-torn Syrian city of Aleppo have been killed in an explosion.
The lethal blast, believed to be a car bomb, happened at a transit point for Syrians being taken to safe havens on the outskirts of the city.
Shocking images of the aftermath show bodies lying on the ground and coaches alight.
Initial reports on Syrian state television claim 43 people died in the explosion in a rebel-held area, while dozens more were injured.
It happened days after Syrian president Bashar al-Assad denied carrying out a chemical gas attack on his own citizens.
State television said today's bombing was carried out by 'terrorist groups' - a term the regime applies to all armed opposition groups.
It was not immediately clear if rebels at the transit point were among the dead, but a senior rebel official said 20 rebels who guarded the buses were killed as well as dozens of passengers.
The blast hit buses in the Rashidin area on Aleppo's outskirts, which had been waiting to cross from rebel-held territory into the government-controlled city itself, carrying people evacuated from two Shi'ite villages on Friday.
The civilians, from the villages of al-Foua and Kefraya, were on the move following a deal between warring sides supposed to see 30,000 civilians taken to safety.
A statement from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said: 'The suicide bomber was driving a van supposedly carrying aid supplies and detonated near the buses.'
It warned that the death toll was likely to rise given the 'several dozen wounded' at the blast site.
The blast hit the Rashidin area on Aleppo's outskirts, where dozens of buses carrying mostly Shi'ite residents of the two villages are being evacuated.
The victims are believed to have left the villages a day earlier. The evacuation deal was brokered by Iran and Qatar.
Around 5,000 people piled onto buses leaving Fuaa and Kafraya while a further 2,200 were evacuated from rebel-held Madaya and Zabadani.
But thousands were stuck on the road Saturday in rebel-held Rashidin, west of Aleppo, where the bombing took place.
Shocking footage shows bombed-out buses after explosion in Syria