SYRIAN troops took back swathes of east Aleppo yesterday as Washington “backtracked” in talks with Russia.

The army exploited its deep advance on Sunday from the eastern airport to the National Eye Hospital on the edge of the central Old City, seizing large built-up areas north and south of the salient.

To the north, soldiers freed the al-Shaar district. One local source said that insurgents fled the area, which had been left perilously exposed to encirclement after Sunday’s advance.