US Secretary of State John Kerry fired back in an interview with CNN, saying Russian Federation needs to stop Assad from attacking the opposition and blocking aid delivery.
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Unidentified warplanes struck rebel-held areas in Syria’s divided city of Aleppo for the first time since a fragile ceasefire took effect last week, a monitoring group reported Sunday, bringing the truce brokered by the USA and Russian Federation closer to collapse.
The dispute should further complicate humanitarian aid deliveries to Syria, including its largest pre-war city Aleppo, where the fragile truce is under threat.
“Let’s wait”, he said, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly meeting. The United States and Russian Federation brokered the truce and there has yet to be any comment from either party about the expiration of the ceasefire.
The attack came a day after strikes by the US-led coalition killed dozens of Syrian government troops, prompting a diplomatic firestorm.
Seven days after the cease-fire went into effect, no aid convoys have been able to reach besieged rebel-held neighborhoods of the northern city of Aleppo, in spite of the fact that 20 United Nations trucks loaded with aid supplies have been ready to deploy from across the border in Turkey for a week.
Up to 275,000 people remain trapped in that part of the city without food, water, proper shelter or medical care, he added.
The road needs to become a demilitarised zone in order for aid to proceed. Rebels maintain that government troops have yet to pull back from their positions.
In another blow to hopes for the ceasefire, the governor of Homs said several hundred rebels would be evacuated from the last rebel-held district of the Syrian city on Monday, prompting rebels to warn any such step would amount to the government declaring the end of the truce.
“Every time the Syrian state makes tangible progress either on the ground or towards national reconciliation, anti-Syrian states increase their support of terrorist organisations”, Assad said in comments published by state news agency SANA.
The move is part of Turkey’s campaign to push the extremist group away from its borders but it adds a new element to an already complex and unstable battlefield.
The Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said he regretted the loss of life and injury but will not speculate about why the air strike in eastern Syria went so badly wrong.
The U.S. -led coalition comprises 67 countries, more than a dozen of which carry out airstrikes against the militants.
The Syria truce deal brokered by the United States and Russian Federation is set to expire this evening at 7pm (1600 GMT/Midnight Malaysian time), a senior military source in Damascus told AFP.
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Hopes the ceasefire would allow aid to reach besieged areas in Eastern Aleppo have diminished. Two children were among eight victims of a separate strike in a rebel-controlled area in the southern province of Daraa.
