The United States and Russian Federation have reportedly convinced the Syrian government and moderate rebel factions to extend the nation’s fragile cease-fire to the troubled city of Aleppo, officials said Wednesday.
Advertisement
State Department spokesman Mark Toner said Washington and Moscow would monitor the truce closely.
“We look to Russian Federation … to press for the Assad regime’s compliance with this effort, and the United States will do its part with the opposition”, Wednesday’s statement said.
The US and Russian Federation finalized a nationwide ceasefire in late February, but have struggled to make it stick.
Three people were killed on Wednesday in renewed shelling by Syrian rebels of government-held areas in Aleppo.
A Syrian refugee woman and child enter the Jordanian side of the Hadalat border crossing, a military zone east of the capital Amman, after arriving from Aleppo, Syria on May 4, 2016.
Frank-Walter Steinmeier called for President Bashar al-Assad’s government and all armed groups to respect the cease-fire in full and give the people of Aleppo “a respite from war and violence”. Numerous rebel pockets are in residential areas, however, leading the United States to oppose continuing to go after them.
Wednesday’s announcement does little to settle the underlying conflict in Syria, where territory has been carved up between Assad, rebel groups and Islamic extremists such as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. Neither the Syrian government nor the rebels were party to it – as we reported, it was an agreement for their powerful worldwide backers to encourage their proxies to stop fighting.
Ayrault said it is “a awful drama…in which the regime in Damascus bears the entire responsibility for what is happening – the threatening of the cease-fire”.
The battle was the most intense in Aleppo for more than a year, it added.
Temporary local ceasefires have been put in place in two areas of Syria but those have not been extended to Aleppo.
Aleppo has seen one of the worst campaigns of aerial bombardment since the start of the Syrian civil war, Feltman said.
“The estimated 1.3 million people living in western Aleppo city are crowding into basements, seeking refuge from volleys of shells and mortar rounds, which continue to slam into what’s left of their homes”, he said.
US Secretary of State, John Kerry says the truce is vital for a peaceful future in Syria.
There was no comment from the Syrian government on the reported capture.
He was speaking after a Cabinet meeting in which French foreign minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said he was concerned over the breakdown in negotiations following a surge of violence in the northern city of Aleppo that has threatened a wider two-month ceasefire in the war-torn country.
Advertisement
“Over the past 10 days, indiscriminate attacks and the use of explosive weapons in populated areas by government forces, and by listed terrorist groups have intensified – affecting mostly civilians”, O’Brien told the council.
