The UK’s special representative for Syria Gareth Bayley called the attacks “barbaric”.
Advertisement
“Bring on the #SyriaCeasefire”, he tweeted.
In Aleppo, at least 46 civilians, including nine children, were killed in a bombardment of opposition-held areas, reported Al Jazeera.
“We hope this will be the beginning of the end of the civilians’ ordeal, ‘ Bassma Kodmani, a leading member of the opposition umbrella group, the High Negotiations Committee, said”.
“Civilians have no hope anymore”, he added.
State news agency SANA on Saturday reported that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government had approved the agreement.
Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah, which has intervened militarily on behalf of Assad, also announced its support.
“The Islamic Republic of Iran has always welcomed the establishment of ceasefire in Syria and easier access to the humanitarian aids for the whole people of the country (Syria)”, Foreign Ministry Spokesman Bahram Qassemi said Sunday.
That is a real problem on the ground, because Jabhat Fateh al Sham has consistently been one of the most powerful and successful militias fighting Government forces, as well as the Iranian and Iraqi backed militias fighting on the Government side.
“What truce, when the regime commits a massacre in Idlib?” he said on Twitter. And after those strikes get underway, the agreement then calls for the Syrian air force to cease all strikes against areas held by opposition forces.
Although the letter did not explicitly say the groups would abide by the ceasefire, two rebels who confirmed its text to Reuters said they would respect the ceasefire when it comes into force on Monday evening.
Russian FM Sergey Lavrov and US State Secretary John Kerry have agreed that they should focus on a common enemy – Al-Qaida and the IS terrorists. It is scheduled to go into effect at sundown Monday.
To get aid into the battered second city of Aleppo, a “demilitarised zone” would be established around the Castello Road into the city.
A truce brokered by the U.S. and Russian Federation in February did not hold for long in Syria.
Al-Assad’s government has endorsed the plan, while the opposition has voiced doubts on whether the new ceasefire will hold. Syria’s conflict, now in its sixth year, has continued despite several rounds of peace talks and global attempts to try to end the violence.
The airstrikes in Idlib and Aleppo are believed to have been mounted by government jets or those of allied Russian Federation.
Under the new deal, both sides – Russian-backed government forces and rebel groups supported by the USA and Gulf states – are to halt fighting as a confidence-building measure.
The arrangement has divided rebel factions, who have depended on the might of a dominant al-Qaida-linked faction to resist government advances around the contested city of Aleppo.
It remained unclear what Iran, a key ally of Mr Assad, made of the deal.
While some Syrian opposition groups welcomed the truce, the hard-line group Ahrar al-Sham, said it opposes the agreement but will abide by it, according to the Associated Press. Several people were were in critical condition, the group said.
A number of Islamist and FSA brigades earlier announced they had launched a battle in the province of Quneitra, which borders the Golan region, with the aim of opening a rebel corridor to the western suburbs of Damascus. “It creates a real window of opportunity which all relevant actors in the region and beyond should seize to put the crisis in Syria on a different path and ease the violence and suffering being endured by the Syrian people”.
The government has since re-established its siege. Russia’s top diplomat added that “no one can give a 100 percent guarantee” that the truce and other measures to follow will succeed, since there are forces in the region that will try to undermine the worldwide agreement. Forty days of fighting in Aleppo has killed almost 700 civilians, including 160 children, according to a Syrian human rights group.
Advertisement
But hours after it was agreed, warplanes bombed a marketplace in rebel-held Idlib in northwestern Syria, killing at least 58 civilians according to rescue workers and the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The army attacked rebel-held areas, both sides said, pushing to maximize gains before the ceasefire deadline.
