The Syrian military has declared a U.S. -Russia brokered ceasefire over just a week after it began.
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But the two powers were quick to accuse each other of violating the ceasefire, and Moscow has long opposed the USA position of supporting and arming what it calls moderate rebels to fight ISIS.
The truce backed by world powers aimed to help end Syria’s brutal five-year conflict, which has killed more than 300,000 people and displaced millions.
Russia’s claims of rebel violations come amid fallout from a botched US-led operation in eastern Syria at the weekend that killed almost 100 Syrian soldiers. Activists and residents also reported airstrikes on rebel-held parts of Aleppo on Sunday. The figure does not include dozens of Syrian soldiers and Islamic State militants killed in the eastern province of Deir el-Zour.
It was the latest blow to efforts to pause Syria’s hostilities, coming after regime bombing of rebel-held areas and a spat between U.S. and Russian Federation as they traded barbs about who bore responsibility. However, the USA officials said details of the agreement were shared on Monday.
The military said that “armed terrorist groups” repeatedly violated the cease-fire which came into effect last week.
Fierce clashes were heard throughout Damascus on Monday as Syria’s military launched its attack against rebel forces, according to the AFP news agency.
Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir pledged his country’s support for Syria’s opposition forces, along with representatives of Qatar, Turkey and European nations, and stressed that Assad can not remain in power, even though that issue has been delayed until the fighting wanes.
The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that aid workers had been killed in an “aerial bombardment”.
The UN’s special representative for Syria expressed outrage about the airstrike, which hit the UN aid convoy west of Aleppo.
“Then he needs to stop [blocking aid] and let the joint implementation center get set up so Russian Federation and the United States can coordinate in order to avoid the kind of bad thing that happened yesterday that we all acknowledge and regret”, Kerry said.
Russian Federation – president Bashar Assad’s main foreign backer – said it had been told by the Syrian government that 62 of its troops had been killed in the strike.
American officials told The New York Times they suspected Russian Federation was never committed to the ceasefire, and much preferred the status quo in which it exerts significant influence in shaping events on the ground.
No details were immediately available on the strike, but the second U.S. administration official said it was clearly an air attack and that US-led coalition jets weren’t responsible.
Plans to evacuate several hundred rebels from the last opposition-held district of Homs city have also overshadowed the agreement, with rebels saying it would amount to the government declaring the ceasefire over.
At the time, he said, the “basic ceasefire is holding, but fragile”.
A humanitarian aid group said the death toll was higher.
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.
Konashenkov says Moscow still has not been able to contact the US-backed opposition to co-ordinate ceasefire efforts despite Washington’s assurances.
He said “the main issue” was that moderate opposition units had not been separated from the fighters of Syria’s former Al-Qaeda affiliate on the ground.
“The latest example of this is the flagrant American aggression on one of the Syrian army’s positions in Deir Ezzor”, he said.
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He said that while the details of exactly who did what were likely to remain unclear, the idea of allowing humanitarian aid into besieged areas would go against the Syrian regime’s “starvation strategy” to win back territory.
