Senators push measure on Saudi arms sale U.S. reviewing whether strike killed Syrian forces Syrian military declares ceasefire to be over MORE said Monday on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in NY that the ceasefire was “holding but fragile”, according to the AP.
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Syria’s Assad regime on Monday unilaterally announced the end of a cease-fire – sponsored by the US and Russian Federation – that came into effect on September 12 to mark the recently-ended Muslim Eid al-Adha holiday. Spokesman Kirby called on Russian Federation, which is responsible for ensuring Syria’s compliance, to clarify the Syrian position.
Earlier Sunday, Islamic State militants shot down a Syrian warplane as Syrian forces regained ground lost to the extremists following Saturday’s airstrike, state media said.
Both the Syrian rebels, supported by the USA -led coalition, and Syrian government troops, backed by Russian Federation, accused each other of violating the ceasefire since it took effect last Monday.
Russian military spokesman Lt Gen Sergei Rudskoi said in a televised statement: “Considering that the conditions of the ceasefire are not being respected by the rebels, we consider it pointless for the Syrian government forces to respect it unilaterally”.
Apparently errant US-led air strikes at the weekend, which Moscow says killed 62 Syrian soldiers, likely didn’t help.
U.N. Special Envoy to Syria Staffan de Mistura said he was outraged that the aid vehicles would come under attack after days of waiting for official government permission to move.
Syrian state TV is quoting President Bashar Assad as saying that the airstrike of the US -led coalition against his troops was meant to support the Islamic State group.
Even as a new barrage of bombs and shells pummeled besieged Aleppo once again on Monday, the United States refused to abandon efforts to broker a ceasefire.
Syria’s military has declared a week-long ceasefire over with air raids reported in Aleppo as U.S. and Russian officials met in Geneva to try to extend the truce.
He denounced the Syrian military declaration, but also suggested that Russian Federation was partly to blame.
A USA airstrike on Syrian forces on Saturday also caused trouble.
The U.N. humanitarian aid agency’s decision came after deadly airstrikes on aid trucks the previous night that activists said killed at least 12 people, mostly truck drivers and Red Crescent workers.
And if it held, the United States was to have set up a joint military cell with Russian Federation to target jihadists.
But Vitaly Churkin, Russia’s ambassador to the United Nations, called the strike “an extraordinary display of American heavy-handedness” on Saturday.
But both the Syrian army and the rebels spoke openly of returning to the battlefield.
The air raid by the USA -led coalition killed dozens of Syrian soldiers and led to a harsh verbal attack on Washington by Damascus and Moscow.
The U.N. suspended aid deliveries and a Syrian human rights group reported that the government launched an offensive north of Aleppo in a bid to tighten the siege on rebel-held parts of Syria’s largest city.
It accused “terrorist groups”, a term the government uses for all insurgents, of exploiting the calm to rearm while violating the ceasefire 300 times, and vowed to “continue fulfilling its national duties in fighting terrorism in order to bring back security and stability”. It said four civilians were killed in government-held areas.
Seven days after the cease-fire went into effect, aid convoys have not been able to reach besieged rebel-held neighborhoods of the northern city of Aleppo.
The Observatory reported at least 40 strikes in and around Aleppo since the truce ended, and said some 32 people had been killed in all.
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Last month, Turkey for the first time sent tanks across the border into Syria to help rebels clear territory of IS militants and to contain the expansion of a Syrian Kurdish militia.
