The United States and Russian Federation agreed that the Syrian cessation of hostilities that began on Monday had largely held and should be extended for another 48 hours despite sporadic violence, the U.S. State Department said on Wednesday.
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Supplies are in warehouses ready for transportation to rebel-held east Aleppo and other besieged areas as soon as they are cleared to enter, said spokeswoman Krista Armstrong of the International Committee of the Red Cross.
“The government … needs to allow unhindered access to those trucks”, Mistura said Tuesday evening in Geneva.
He said the government had agreed September 6 – before the cease-fire deal was inked – to allow aid into five areas, but the authorizations still haven’t come.
“At one point we’re going to be asked to support in greater detail this plan, so to do that we will need to have all the information”.
“It is particularly regrettable”.
Under the deal, the United States and Russian Federation are aiming for reduced violence over seven consecutive days before they move to the next stage of coordinating military strikes against Nusra Front and Daesh militants, which are not party to the truce.
By evening Wednesday, there were no reports of major violations of the agreement – although Gen. Poznikhir said rebels had violated the truce 60 times since it came into force – which calls on all parties to hold their fire, allowing only for airstrikes against the extremist Islamic State group and al-Qaida’s affiliate in Syria, known as Jabhat Fatah al-Sham.
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.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based monitoring group, estimates that up to 430,000 people have been killed in the conflict, although an accurate estimate is nearly impossible to obtain.
It said government forces will not start pulling out until the rebels begin to do the same.
The opposition reported 29 violations by government forces, including shelling, air raids and heavy machine gunfire.
“If they do that, we’re willing and able to go to all these places in the next few days – and we are very hopeful that we will indeed be able to do so”, he added.
The ceasefire, which began at sundown on Monday, appears to largely be holding, with no civilian deaths reported by monitoring groups in the last 48 hours.
Mayadeen is in the eastern province of Deir el-Zour, near the Iraqi border.
The spokesman, Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov, told the Interfax news service that rebel troops continued to fire artillery against government forces and had not separated themselves from units loyal to a former affiliate of al-Qaeda that both the United States and Russian Federation have deemed a terrorist organization.
Rebels say Damascus has carried out numerous violations.
It is a measure of the sensitivity of the agreement – for Washington, for Moscow and for an array of other countries and opposition groups – that the State Department has not released a text of the agreement with the Russians, or even a fact sheet summarizing it.
Russian Federation is urging Syrian rebels to separate themselves from “terrorists” to ensure that the Russia-U.S. -brokered cease-fire continues to hold in Syria, where a relative calm has prevailed since the truce went into effect two days ago.
“Things are taking longer than we hoped”, David Swanson of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs told Reuters.
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The ceasefire does not include the insurgent groups Nusra Front, which has renamed itself Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, and Islamic State.
