Russian Federation said on Friday that a UN Security Council endorsement of a Syria ceasefire deal between Moscow and Washington appeared unlikely because the United States does not want to share the documents detailing the agreement with the 15-member body.
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“If this air strike was the result of a targeting error, it is a direct outcome of the USA side’s stubborn unwillingness to coordinate its action against terrorist groups on Syrian territory with Russian Federation”, the defence ministry said in a statement.
IS has repeatedly attacked the government-held air base, which is an isolated enclave deep in extremist-held territory.
The Russian military says the Syrian army has moved its heavy weapons back to a key highway near the city of Aleppo after the opposition failed to withdraw theirs in sync.
Syria’s military says the USA -led coalition carried out an airstrike on an eastern base that is surrounded by Islamic State militants, allowing the extremists to advance and potentially dealing a major blow to a shaky cease-fire.
US defense officials said they have begun working out some of the details, even though they are hamstrung by existing USA law that prohibits any military-to-military relations with Russian Federation in the aftermath of Moscow’s annexation of the Crimea region of Ukraine.
Nour el-Din el-Zinki group says in statement Friday that their observation posts in the area are confirming that government forces are still on the Castello road. It wasn’t known who carried out the attack.
Mayadeen is in the eastern province of Deir el-Zour, near the Iraqi border.
As part of the truce deal, the rebels and the Syrian government are supposed to agree to the deployment of a security force to protect checkpoints along the route to Aleppo to ensure aid delivery to the city’s opposition sector, which has been besieged by Russian-backed government forces since July.
Earlier on Saturday, Russian President Vladimir Putin questioned the USA commitment to the fragile cease-fire, suggesting that Washington wasn’t prepared to break with “terrorist elements” battling Assad’s forces.
The Russian Center for Reconciliation informed the United States about the “moderate opposition’s” unwillingness to meet the requirements of the agreement and added that therefore “the government troops had to stop withdrawing forces and return them to the position, which they had kept before”.
The ministry said Lavrov had once again called for the United States to make the agreement public and have the United Nations Security Council endorse it.
Officials have provided details of the agreement in press conferences, but have not released an official document, fuelling suspicions on both sides. “But this is a very unsafe route”.
Russian Federation has blamed violations on the rebels, while the opposition accused al-Assad’s forces of breaking the terms of the deal. Lavrov noted the “refusal by an array of illegal armed groups to join the cease-fire”, and Washington’s obligation to “separate units of the moderate opposition from terrorist groupings”, according to a Foreign Ministry statement.
The deal has somewhat quieted the bombs over Syria’s second city, but aid convoys have not been allowed to reach the roughly 250,000 civilians besieged by government forces.
Russia’s military announced Thursday evening that Syrian government forces had begun withdrawing from Castello road but did not confirm if Russian troops would be stationed there.
The state-run Anadolu news agency says three US flags were hung on Thursday around a compound of the Democratic Union Party, or PYD, and were still visible from Turkey on Friday afternoon.
Syria’s state media are saying that insurgents fired a rocket that hit a church in the northern city of Aleppo, causing material damage but no casualties.
DPA reported that the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that the airstrikes killed at least 83 Syrian soldiers and injured 120.
However, the Syrian government has not provided needed “facilitation letters”, or permits, to allow for the start of the convoys, de Mistura said.
Syria’s conflict has killed more than 300,000 people and displaced half the country’s population since March 2011.
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The United Nations says as many as 275,000 people have been cut off from assistance there since early July.
