Staffan de Mistura, UN special envoy for Syria, said there has been a “significant drop in violence”, with no reports of airstrikes.
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Activists, skeptical of the chances of the cease-fire holding, noted to VOA that another cessation of hostilities brokered by Washington and Moscow earlier this year, which lasted for just weeks, also was undermined by the blocking of aid delivery.
Poznikhir also said Russian Federation had bombed the area north of the historic city of Palmyra, “where IS militants are concentrated”, in the first such strikes since the truce came into force.
But Syria’s foreign ministry says it won’t allow any aid to enter the rebel-held side of Aleppo without coordination between the Assad government and the UN.
The city, Syria’s biggest before the civil war that broke out in 2011, is now divided, and its rebel-held area is besieged by government forces.
“The Aleppo provincial council needs to accept the fact that this aid is urgent and it is according to [the] United Nations approach and according to a well-recognized agreement”, he said.
Turkey, which borders Syria in the north, has backed the rebels in Syria, and consistently opposed Assad.
The U.N. estimates there are 5 million Syrians in need of humanitarian aid living in hard-to-reach areas.
As of Wednesday, U.N. convoys were still waiting on the Syrian government to issue transit papers authorizing aid workers to pass through government lines into rebel-held areas of the city.
Russian military officials claim US -backed rebel groups have violated the cease-fire since it went into effect almost two dozen times on the Castello road, a key route into insurgent-held parts of Aleppo.
Ban said he has been in touch with the Russian government urging them to exercise influence on the Syrian government to let the trucks in.
There are many players on the Syrian battlefield, and rebels encompass extremist elements – like ISIS and the Al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front, which recently rebranded as Jabhat Fateh al-Sham – as well as moderate groups that want to oust Assad but don’t share the Islamist goals of the extremist groups.
Mr Egeland said he hoped aid could go to Aleppo on Friday, but first all fighting forces had to disengage from the Castello Road supply route. According to an investigation by Britain’s Guardian newspaper on Monday U.N. -sponsored aid convoys only reach “on average 33 percent of people to whom access was requested”.
Criticism has also been levelled at the Syrian government for trying to control aid flows.
Khandakani is a volunteer at a medical center in eastern Aleppo.
De Mistura said some people had used the argument that offices were closed during this week’s Muslim Eid holiday, and the Syrian government had been “a little bit slow” during Eid, but he would not accept that as a valid reason.
Meanwhile, Syrian state media reported violations of the cease-fire in central Homs, saying that rebels fired mortar rounds Wednesday in a rural part of the province.
General Viktor Poznikhir, first deputy chief of the General Staff’s Main Operational Department, said Russian Federation supports the extension of the cessation of hostilities on all Syrian territories for an additional 48 hours.
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To earn the trust of the Syrian opposition, the Americans would have to convince Russian Federation that the USA would take action if the Assad regime were to continue to massacre civilians, as it has done throughout the civil war.
