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Aid to Aleppo held up despite truce

“The Russian party, despite numerous breaches of the cessation of hostilities and lack of progress in the USA process to distinguish moderate opposition from Jabhat al-Nusra, is doing everything to implement agreements reached in Geneva”, Lt. Gen. Viktor Poznikhir said at a briefing.

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“This is one of the most serious violations of the cease-fire”, al-Shami said via Skype.

Under the cease-fire deal, Russian Federation is responsible for ensuring Syrian compliance with its terms.

The Syrian government has not provided needed “facilitation letters”, or permits, to allow for the start of the convoys, de Mistura said.

The Russian Defense Ministry only mentioned that it had military observers on the road and said nothing about troop deployment.

The main dispute of the truce so far is over aid to Aleppo, Syria’s biggest city before the war, divided between rebel and government-held zones for years.

The Americans were forced to leave the area after Turkish-backed rebels protested against their presence, the source said. The U.N. estimates about a quarter million people are trapped inside.

The reduction in violence since the US-Russia agreement came into force at sunset on Monday had been substantial, but expecting a “cessation of hostilities” was perhaps ambitious after a war of five years, he said.

The ceasefire began on Monday and could, if all goes well be renewed for another 48 hours at midnight on Friday.

A USA military official in Baghdad said he was looking into the report, which could not be independently corroborated.

But Turkey views them as an offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, which has waged a decades-long insurgency in Turkey and is viewed as a terrorist group by Turkey and the U.S.

US State Department spokesman Mark Toner Toner acknowledged Wednesday that the situation hadn’t been flawless.

The Syrian National Coalition, a consortium of opposition groups, said in a statement on Thursday that the U.N.’s decision to consult the government on aid to besieged areas “renders the cease-fire devoid of meaning”.

In Moscow, a spokesman for Russia’s Defence Ministry accused the United States of not fulfilling its obligations under the ceasefire agreement.

Russian Federation has “decisions to make about the influence that they have on Assad and the degree to which they’re going to use it or not”, Kirby said. But that is not happening, he said.

The UN said it has not received the necessary guarantees from the U.S. and Russian Federation for aid convoys to cross the Turkish border into Syria – nor permission from the Syrian government for trucks to get through government checkpoints to deliver badly need supplies.

OCHA spokesman Jens Laerke said “it is my understanding” that United Nations officials are waiting for assurances that conditions are safe enough for convoys to proceed from Turkey to eastern Aleppo.

“The largest impediment is Syrian President Bashar al-Assad not giving the green light to trucks coming across the border” to reach Aleppo, an Obama administration official said in Washington.

Jan Egeland, a top United Nations coordinator of aid for Syria, says in a text message that the U.N.is waiting for assurances on “monitoring arrangements”. The report said two people guarding the location were wounded.

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.

Mr Bogdanov said “they key criteria, is action”.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says Friday’s fighting is concentrated in the neighborhood of Jobar, next to Qaboun.

Sporadic shelling continues in eastern suburbs of Damascus but a fragile truce between government forces and rebels in Syria is still holding – just. The US says al-Nusra is linked to al-Qaida and is a legitimate target alongside Islamic State.

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.

It is aimed at halting the fighting between the Syrian regime and opposition groups and includes specifying improved access for humanitarian aid and requiring the withdrawal of regime forces from the Castello road supply route. Aid is expected to enter rebel-held Aleppo later Friday, he said.

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Aleppo-based activist Bahaa al-Halaby denies that government troops withdrew from Castello road.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government is not allowing aid deliveries