UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon urged Russian Federation and the United States on Wednesday to press all sides to guarantee the security of the UN aid convoy.
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The Security Council, being led by New Zealand for the month of September, was also due to hold a high-level meeting on Syria on Thursday.
The United Nations has described the ceasefire as a “critical window of opportunity” to deliver aid to rebel-held eastern districts of Aleppo city, where around 250,000 civilians are besieged by government forces.
Russian Federation and a war monitor said the Syrian army had begun to withdraw from a road into Aleppo on Thursday, a prerequisite for pressing ahead with global peacemaking efforts as the government and rebels accused each other of violating a truce.
During the scheduled meeting, United States and Russian envoys were to present details of the joint agreement that calls for a ceasefire, the delivery of aid and joint targeting of Islamist rebels in Syria.
“As of the third day (of the truce), only the Syrian army is observing the regime of silence”.
If the cessation holds for seven days, the U.S. and Russian Federation have agreed to jointly plan attacks on the Jabhat Fateh al-Sham group, which was previously known as the al-Nusra Front, and so-called Islamic State (IS).
The truce was billed as the “last chance” to end the five-year war but it has been marred by a lack of aid deliveries, sporadic violence and friction between Russian Federation and the United States, which brokered the deal.
Elsehwere in the same province, an airstrike Thursday on the IS-held town of Mayadeen killed at least four people and wounded dozens, said opposition activists and Deir el-Zour 24, an activist collective. The Observatory on Thursday reported the first three deaths since the cease-fire went into effect on Monday night.
According to the monitor, those were “the first strikes on an area where there are no jihadists since the start of the ceasefire”.
But the biggest problem under the deal has been the Syrian government’s refusal to let United Nations aid into rebel-held areas of Aleppo that are surrounded by pro-government forces and where an estimated 300,000 civilians are trapped without food and other necessities.
Speaking at a press conference in the UN office in Geneva, UN Special Envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura said it was “regrettable” that Damascus had yet to provide the necessary permits.
But promised authorization from Damascus for large-scale humanitarian convoys had not yet been received.
“Right now, the trucks that could bring them life-saving assistance are idling on the wrong side of the border”, President Barack Obama’s spokesman Josh Earnest said.
Over 2,000 people were killed in 40 days of fighting in Aleppo until the cease-fire went into effect Monday.
“That being said, the clock is ticking and time is of the essence”.
At least 20 trucks carrying enough supplies for 40,000 people are now being held at the Turkish-Syrian border, unable to travel further without permission from the Damascus government.
Maj. -Gen. Igor Konashenkov, a spokesman for the Russian defense ministry, said Russian troops watching the road are ready to replace Syrian government troops as soon as opposition forces are ready to pull back.
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And a sniper later shot dead another person in the city’s rebel-held east, it added. Al-Qaida and Islamic State group militants, who are excluded from the cease-fire, are not present in the area, he said.
