Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the US and Russia would co-chair both the working group on humanitarian aid as well as a task force that will try to deal with the “modalities” of the temporary truce.
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Carter said defense ministers from more than two dozen countries gave a “broad endorsement” of a refined USA plan for defeating the Islamic State.
The International Committee of the Red Cross said Wednesday it estimates that around 50,000 people have been displaced by the increasing fighting in the northern parts of Aleppo province.
YPG forces regularly clash with Islamist and jihadist fighters in northern Syria, but its most active front is further east against the Islamic State extremist group.
Last week, the UN-led peace talks in Geneva between the Syrian regime and the opposition were suspended, after Russian Federation and the Assad regime stepped up their military strikes near Aleppo.
In this February 4, 2016 photo, Secretary of State John Kerry appears at a conference entitled ‘Supporting Syria & The Region, ‘ in London.
“We will approach this meeting in Munich with great hopes that this will be a telling moment”, Kerry said Tuesday in Washington.
Overall, the United Nations says nearly half a million people are besieged in Syria. “Our buses and planes are not waiting there in vain”, he said, adding that Turkey had information that Iran-backed forces in Syria were carrying out “merciless massacres”.
As many as 500 people have been killed in the offensives since the beginning of this month, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported on Wednesday.
Brett McGurk, the Obama administration’s point-man for defeating IS – also known as Isil and Isis – said Russia’s Aleppo offensive was having the perverse effect of helping the extremists by drawing local fighters away from the battle against IS and to the war against Syria’s government. As they’ve shifted to get behind a Russian proposal for a settlement of the war and free elections, the rebels have viewed it as a “betrayal” of their goal of unconditional regime change.
President Bashar Al-Assad’s forces backed by Russian warplanes have captured a string of villages around opposition-held Aleppo over the past week and managed to cut a major rebel supply route to the city.
Russian Ambassador to the UN Vitaly Churkin said on February 10 that Russian and USA officials have been holding “very important” talks in Munich about a cease-fire in Syria.
“The situation is getting worse every day”, said Abu Mohammad, 61, who has remained behind in Aleppo to look after his home. Nonetheless, experts also say there is a limit to how much Russian aerial bombardment can achieve, particularly as the rebels – who still have the backing of Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries – dig in for protracted urban warfare.
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The Turkish security forces said on Wednesday they had seized explosives and four suicide vests in the baggage of a group of suspects stopped at the border in the southeastern town of Karkamis.
