“We have agreed on the areas where such co-ordinated strikes would be taking place, and in those areas, on neutral agreement shared by the Syrian government as well, only the Russian and United States air force will be functional”, Lavrov said.
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The ceasefire in Syria appeared to be holding yesterday, despite sporadic and minor violations, according to Syrian opposition activists and monitoring groups. The Syrian army said it would abide by the cease-fire until midnight on Sunday, while maintaining its right to defend itself against any violations.
The nationwide truce, which went into effect at sundown Monday, is the second major attempt by world powers to halt – or at least curb – the fighting that has killed almost half a million people, decimated cities and infrastructure, and spawned a humanitarian crisis stretching from the Middle East to Europe.
The state-run Syrian Arab News Agency cited shelling and sniper fire in and around Aleppo and Homs, a western Syrian city that also has been the site of unrelenting warfare. Aleppo-based activist Baraa al-Halaby said no aid deliveries, which are also part of the cease-fire deal, have entered the contested area.
Separately, the RIA news agency cited Kapitsyn as saying the residence of Aleppo’s governor had been bombarded with gas canisters on Tuesday, while the TASS news agency cited another Russian officer as saying residential areas in Aleppo and Syrian government positions nearby had been shelled about 10 times.
Rami Abdurrahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said there were minor violations in central Hama province.
The deal’s architects hope the cease-fire will pave the way for an extended period of restraint that can serve as the foundation for peace talks.
Despite the skepticism that accompanied the announcement of the ceasefire in Syria, it might indeed be, as Secretary John Kerry has said, the last hope for bringing peace to the war-torn country. As the cease-fire came into effect, Kerry urged Syrian rebels to distance themselves from al-Qaida-linked militants.
The Observatory says its records show that since the crisis began in March 2011 and until a truce went into effect on Monday evening, 301,781 people have been killed in Syria. It said on Tuesday that the dead include 59,000 government troops and more than 86,000 civilians.
Russian Federation is pushing to make public the text of the cease-fire deal, but Lavrov told reporters on Tuesday that the US opposes such a move.
Indeed, the agreement seems aimed at guaranteeing an end to the conflict between the Syrian regime and the rebels while focusing at length on mutually targeting radical Islamist fighters with links to listed terrorist groups.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that despite continuing mistrust, the two sides had developed five documents that would enable coordination of the fight against terrorism and a revival of Syria’s failed truce in an enhanced form.
The latest death toll figure from the United Nations, which stopped tracking casualties in 2015, had said that 250,000 have been killed in Syria.
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The Russian military said that the Syrian army had informed them they would be ready to hand over control of a checkpoint on the road to the Syrian Red Crescent at 1900 local time (1600 GMT), with some 20 members of a pro-government militia “for security”. But Putin and Assad have agreed to multiple previous truces, in Syria and, in Putin’s case, Ukraine – and violated all of them.
