The United States said Monday it is prepared to extend the window for Syria’s fractured week-old cease-fire despite numerous violations and the Syrian military’s announcement that the truce is over.
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But the Syrian military announced Monday that after seven days it is ending its participation in the ceasefire, blaming the rebels for repeated breaches of the truce.
Earlier on Monday, the United Nations’ Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported that an interagency aid convoy crossed the conflict line in the Big Orem area of the Syrian city of Aleppo. A helicopter attack on the southern village of Dael killed at least eight people, activists said.
Syrian state media said there were 32 violations by rebels on Sunday alone.
The areas hit are close to Syrian army positions that were targeted on Saturday by the USA -led coalition. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 29 children and teenagers were among those killed, as well as 17 women.
United Nations humanitarian chief Stephen O’Brien said he was “pained” that Aleppo had still not received promised aid deliveries.
Speaking to Reuters from the Turkish city of Gaziantep, he also indicated that rebel groups were preparing for new military action, saying: “I imagine in the near future there will be action by the factions”.
Of course, even a respite that doesn’t last is better than nothing at all (although the truce has so far been very disappointing with regard to humanitarian relief).
Were the mainstream opposition to accept a diktat for a sellout, it would be rapidly outflanked by the fighters, for whom anything less than the Assad clan’s departure from power would be tantamount to accepting that hundreds of thousands of Syrians were killed, and still more maimed, and huge swaths of the country turned to rubble, for nothing.
The truce was dealt a blow on Saturday when warplanes from the US-led coalition against so-called Islamic State (IS) bombed Syrian troops in the eastern city of Deir al-Zour, apparently unintentionally.
Washington hopes it will lead to talks on ending a war that has splintered Syria, uprooting 11 million people and creating the world’s worst refugee crisis. It is not uncommon for the Coalition Air Operations Center to confer with Russian officials as a professional courtesy and to deconflict Coalition and Russian aircraft, although such contact is not required by the current U.S. – Russia Memorandum of Understanding on safety of flight. The U.N. accused the government of obstructing the delivery while Russian officials said rebels opened fire at the delivery roads.
And that Russian Federation has not upheld its end of a ceasefire deal which would have seen Moscow and the United States set up a military coordination cell.
Syria’s military on Monday declared that the seven-day, US-Russian brokered ceasefire was over as the government and opposition traded accusations over mounting violations.
He denounced the Syrian military declaration, but also suggested that Russian Federation was partly to blame.
The Syrian army meanwhile had yet to announce any extension of the seven-day ceasefire it declared on September 12, which was due to expire at 11:59 p.m. (2059 GMT) on Sunday, according to the statement issued by the army command when the truce was announced.
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“Our outrage at this attack is enormous. the convoy was the outcome of a long process of permission and preparations to assist isolated civilians”, de Mistura said in a statement, according to Reuters.
