The Syrian army said in a statement last week that the truce will last until midnight Sunday.
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Over the last couple of months, while the US -led coalition forces have been making gains in the neighboring Iraq against ISIS, the issues in Syria are far more complicated and confusing, even more so since Turkey joined the fight when they started attacking Turkish forces who had already proven themselves to be the best fighting group to take on ISIS. Humanitarian aid was supposed to flow to Aleppo and five other areas in Syria during that time.
The bloodiest day for civilians was Sunday, when a barrel bomb attack killed 10 in a southern rebel-held town and one woman died in the first raids on Aleppo since the truce started. The Homs governor said the plan had been postponed from Monday to Tuesday.
For his part, US Secretary of State John Kerry scrambled to try to salvage the truce: “We have not had seven days of calm and of delivery of humanitarian goods”, Kerry said. But he added that Russian Federation must clarify its position on the status of the truce.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad called that incident “flagrant aggression”.
But most aid shipments envisioned under the truce have yet to go in, especially a convoy destined for rebel-held eastern parts of Aleppo, where some 275,000 civilians are believed trapped without access to food or medical supplies.
Zakaria Malahifji, speaking to Reuters from the Turkish city of Gaziantep, also indicated rebel groups were preparing for combat: “I imagine in the near future there will be action by the factions”.
The Syrian Armed Forces General Command issued a statement Monday declaring that “the US-Russian ceasefire deal started since September 12th is over”. The announcement came as world leaders were convening at the United Nations, where the inability to stop the Syria war has loomed over the organization.
But it has faced enormous challenges from the outset, including how to disentangle nationalist rebels backed by the West from jihadists who are not covered by the deal.
The last ceasefire, reached in February, unraveled over a period of weeks as fighting intensified, particularly in and around Aleppo, Syria’s biggest city before the war and now potentially the war’s biggest prize for pro-government forces.
Syrian officials said the growing number of attacks made the ceasefire unsustainable, and Russian officials appeared to concur, with Lt. Gen. Sergei Rudskoy saying it was “pointless” for the Syrian government to respect the ceasefire unilaterally while they were getting attacked so much by the rebels.
Then the United Nations and monitors complained that a UN and Red Crescent aid convoy had been attacked, destroying at least 18 trucks and leaving 12 aid workers dead.
Both sides had repeatedly blamed each other for breaching the truce.
The delivery of aid to civilians has been an issue that has plagued the crisis almost since it first began in 2011.
The situation worsened on Saturday night when US-led airstrikes killed more than 60 Syrian troops.
“Clearly, it would not be the practice of the United States [to say] those are Syrian forces, but they are prisoners, so it’s OK to hit them”, the official said.
Australian planes were also involved in the errant air raid.
“Multiple sources have confirmed that the town was shelled this evening”, he said.
With so many parties involved on the ground and in the air, it is Russian Federation who has the power to manipulate the ceasefire agreement in a rare opportunity to drag the world’s greatest power, the USA, through the mud. “So far it’s only a Russian report”.
What teens need most from their parents. Only the two main architects of the fragile agreement, the US and Russian Federation, could officially declare its end.
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Earlier this month, Syrian government forces and their allies captured areas they lost south of the city, re-imposing a siege on its opposition-held eastern neighborhoods. Syrian state media said there were 32 violations by rebels on Sunday alone.
