US Secretary of State John Kerry, left, talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov during their joint news conference following their meeting to discuss the crisis in Syria, in Geneva, Switzerland.
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The airstrikes on parts of Aleppo and nearby towns killed at least 45 people and wounded dozens more, the Aleppo Media Center said, according to the Associated Press.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 30 people were killed in Aleppo province and another 39 were killed by airstrikes in neighboring Idlib province.
“A Russian warplane targeted a residential area and a market in Idlib”, Al Jazeera’s Adham Abu al-Husam said, as civil defence forces, firemen and paramedics worked to pull survivors from the rubble.
“Today, the United States and Russian Federation are announcing a plan which we hope will reduce violence, ease suffering and resume movement toward a negotiated peace and a political transition in Syria”, Kerry said.
But there seem to be other clear problems, one of which is the agreement doesn’t make it clear why Assad’s government “would want to participate in a process that the United States insists is meant to lead to his departure”, notes the Washington Post.
Previous peace efforts have crumbled within weeks, with the United States accusing Assad’s forces of attacking opposition groups and civilians.
“By all accounts, Assad air attacks have been the main driver of civilian casualties and migration flows”.
In a letter, he said the initial truce would last 48 hours and could then be renewed, and that it would be “more effective than its predecessor” because it would halt Syrian strikes on “on civilians and the opposition”.
But, the High Negotiations Committee (HNC) said it feared that the Russian-U.S. deal would be enforced on the opposition to benefit the regime, the official spokesman of the HNC Riad Nassan Agha said.
According to the US secretary of state, Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad’s air force should call off all military action, including air strikes, in order to stop the spread of violence, and because “indiscriminate” bombing causes civilian suffering.
“After six years of fighting it is time to bring an end to the conflict in Syria and we hope this ceasefire can provide parties with the space to do this”, Mr McCully says.
Kerry said the “bedrock” of the new deal was an agreement that the Syrian government would not fly combat missions in an agreed area on the pretext of hunting fighters from the Nusra Front, an al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria which has recently changed its name to Jabhat Fateh al-Sham. She said mechanisms will be needed for the enforcement of the deal, including the “cessation of hostilities and the grounding (of) regime air forces”.
If the planned cessation of hostilities holds for seven days, it will be followed by an unlikely military partnership between the USA and Russian Federation to target Islamic State and al Qaeda.
“The armed opposition in Syria now faces what is perhaps its biggest and most momentous decision since they chose to take up arms against the Assad regime in 2011”, said Charles Lister, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute think-tank.
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“They will be judged by their actions alone”, Johnson added.
