U.N. Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura wants a deal as soon as possible so he can restart peace talks within a month and aid flows can resume.
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He said the United Nations was “in principle and in practice in favour of humanitarian corridors under the right circumstances” but said Russian Federation needed to provide more information on how the system would work.
The United Nation’s special envoy for Syria on Friday warned that time was running out for the population of the besieged and devastated city of Aleppo.
It added that three corridors had already begun working in the area.
“By disavowing its ties to al Qaeda – which, incidentally, it did with al Qaeda’s blessing – Nusra has made it harder to isolate it from more moderate groups, some of whose members may join it now because it’s more powerful than some of the groups they belong to now”, said the official.
The government has recently opened three safe corridors for civilians and fighters who want to leave, after effectively besieging around 300,000 people living in opposition-held areas of the country’s largest city.
Shoigu said in televised comments that President Vladimir Putin has ordered a “large-scale humanitarian operation” that will be launched outside Aleppo to help civilians as well as allow fighters who wanted to lay down the arms to surrender.
Syria’s opposition has dismissed the humanitarian corridors initiative as a ploy and part of the government’s bid to recapture all of Aleppo city.
“The brutal message to our people is: leave or starve”, Kodmani said.
There were no reports of civilians using the corridors on Friday.
“We’re standing here by the Bustan al-Qasr crossing”.
Many residents said they were afraid to leave via government-controlled routes into regime-held territory.
“Everybody that we’ve spoken with, when it comes to opposition activists and residents in the rebel-held areas of Aleppo, have told us that these humanitarian corridors have not been opened”, Al Jazeera’s Mohamed Jamjoom, reporting from Gaziantep on the Turkish side of the Syria-Turkey border, said.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said IS executed 24 civilians “in the last 24 hours” after taking Buyir from the Syrian Democratic Forces.
Save the Children says the maternity hospital is the only such facility in the area, with the next facility some 44 miles away.
A Russian deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, said Washington’s stance would allow militants to regroup since it required a ceasefire before distinguishing between terrorists and other opposition groups.
US Secretary of State John Kerry said on Friday that if the operation was “a ruse” it could disrupt US-Russian co-operation in Syria.
Observatory’s chief Rami Adurrahman says another 13 people were killed in the strikes but that he couldn’t say if they were IS fighters or civilians.
The Manbij area has seen extensive battles between ISIS extremists and U.S.-backed Kurdish-led fighters, who have been advancing under the cover of airstrikes by the U.S.-led coalition.
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But Assad and his Russian allies are unlikely to accept the rebranding as a reason to halt military operations that have put the Syrian leader in the strongest position on the battlefield for years.
