The Syrian government has authorized the United Nations to send an additional 20 staff to east Aleppo, where they will monitor the ongoing evacuation of thousands of people, a U.N. spokesman said on Tuesday. “The task is to monitor and observe the evacuations,” Jens Laerke told a news briefing in Geneva. “We do not have independent U.N. access to the buses, so we are not able to enter and access people; that does not take away from the protection concerns that we do have and continue to have,” he added.