“The establishment of the Transitional Governing Body shall require the departure of Bashar al-Assad and his clique who committed heinous crimes against the Syrian people”, it said. But U.S. officials indicated the earliest the talks could happen is Friday.
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It added that Turkey’s actions could “further complicate an already challenging military and political situation in Syria and negatively affect worldwide efforts to devise a settlement platform that would ensure a more sustainable ceasefire, uninterrupted humanitarian access and would provide a solid foundation for conciliation and overcoming the crisis in this country”.
The Civil Defense put the casualty toll from Wednesday’s airstrike at 20 dead and more than 40 wounded.
Syrian activists say at least 10 civilians have been killed in a new airstrike on the neighborhood where a suspected chlorine gas attack struck the previous day. Conflicting casualty counts are common in the aftermath of airstrikes. The regime’s forces have hit back with heavy air strikes.
Turkey’s military entered Syria last month to back efforts by Syrian rebels to push IS from the border, and has also clashed with Syrian Kurdish troops.
The Tuesday update says the United Nations has sent an “inter-agency convoy with life-saving supplies to Hama” and was evaluating the humanitarian situation.
Earlier this month, insurgents pushed northward in Hama province, surprising government troops and dislodging them from areas they controlled around the provincial capital, also called Hama, including a military base and towns and villages near the highway to Damascus.
Kerry, who called in at the meeting, said there is a “new map being drawn up between the U.S. and Russia” that would require the Syrian government not to fly over territory controlled by moderate rebels; areas where there are civilians; and regions with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) and Jabhat Fateh al-Sham fighters, Bays reported.
The fighting sent tens of thousands fleeing in the latest wave, part of a pattern that has displaced almost half of Syria’s population since the war began in 2011.
United States officials are particularly concerned by the deteriorating conditions in and around Syria’s second city, Aleppo, where rebel-held eastern areas are once again under siege after government forces advanced over the weekend. “Wherever the regime is driven out of an area, it ends up destroying it”, he said in a text to The Associated Press. Others fled toward government-controlled Hama city, where four mosques were converted into temporary shelters, OCHA said. “I said there would be no problem from our perspective”. Of those, 4.8 million are refugees with almost 7 million displaced internally. The transitional body would then run the country for 18 months, at the end of which there would be elections.
Boris Johnson has backed proposals by Syrian opposition figures to remove President Bashar Assad and establish a transitional government.
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Hijab said the greatest challenge in achieving political transition came from the worldwide community, pointing the finger at Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, other regional militias, and above all, Russian Federation for protecting Assad.
