US President Barack Obama also voiced “deep concern” that the government continued to block humanitarian aid.
Advertisement
State department spokesman Mark Toner said he could not confirm a pull-back by Syrian troops around Castello Road.
Following the increasingly public divide between the U.S State Secretary John Kerry and Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter over the Syria agreement between Russian Federation and the U.S., President Barack Obama gathered top national security aids on Friday including his secretaries of state and defense – with the shaky ceasefire set to dominate a meeting ostensibly about countering DAESH.
Syrian opposition activists say an airstrike on the eastern Syrian town of Mayadeen, which is held by the Islamic State group, has killed at least four people and wounded dozens.
The U.N. humanitarian adviser Jan Egeland said both the rebels and the government were responsible for delaying aid deliveries into Aleppo.
“We need to see much more in the terms of humanitarian assistance; we’re not there yet”.
“Today calm appears to have prevailed across Hama, Latakia, Aleppo city and Rural Aleppo and Idlib, with only some allegations of sporadic and geographically isolated incidents”, de Mistura said.
They called for Washington to use their influence over the opposition fighters to get them to abide by the ceasefire.
Once aid is delivered and the ceasefire holds for seven days, the United States and Russian Federation were due to begin coordinating military action against jihadist groups in the country.
The aid impasse came as Russian Federation put pressure on the United States to release the text of the agreement, and urged the USA to allow it to form the basis of a UN security council resolution next week. “These are days which we should have used for convoys to move with the permit to go because there is no fighting”.
UN Security Council members had been due to meet in NY on Friday afternoon for a hastily-called meeting on the fragile Syrian ceasefire, billed as the “last chance” to end the five-year war.
If they apply their influence and it has no effect, “then the arrangement doesn’t come into being and we’re back to, regrettably, where we have so always been, which is innocent civilians being barrel bombed and gassed”, he said.
The state-run Anadolu news agency says three USA flags were hung on Thursday around a compound of the Democratic Union Party, or PYD, and were still visible from Turkey on Friday afternoon. The official wasn’t authorized to be quoted by name and demanded anonymity.
The United States and Russian Federation extended a ceasefire for Syria earlier in the day after reports said the fragile agreement was mostly holding across the country.
But it added that to do so, the U.S. needs to ensure that rebel groups it supports do not violate the truce, Russian General Viktor Poznikhir told Russian state news agency TASS. “So they could go on a minute’s notice”, said Jan Egeland, head of the United Nations humanitarian task force for Syria.
The Sept. 9 agreement also sets out a broad outline of how the military cooperation facility would be set up if violence is reduced and aid delivered over the course of seven continuous days.
Advertisement
The Pentagon, however, has serious reservations about coordinating air strikes and sharing intelligence with Russian Federation and has raised objections on numerous grounds, according to USA officials. SANA said the shelling violates the cease-fire. “The president has no doubt that will happen”, he said.
