According to the Russian military, Syrian troops withdrew briefly from the Castello Road – the main artery into rebel-held part of Aleppo – to make way for aid convoys, and state-run Syrian TV said bulldozers removed some of the sand and cement barriers.
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The United States warned Russian Federation on Friday that potential military cooperation envisioned by a cease-fire deal in Syria will not happen unless humanitarian aid begins to flow into Aleppo and other besieged communities.
However, the United Nations has been unable to deliver aid to the city due to security concerns and refusals by the Syrian government.
As part of the deal, the strategic Castello Road leading into rebel-held eastern Aleppo was meant to be demilitarised for aid to enter.
Syrian Observatory for Human Rights Director Rami Abdulrahman said each side wanted the withdrawal from the Castello Road to happen simultaneously.
The Pentagon also said Friday that dozens of US Special Operations Forces have been deployed to Syria’s border with Turkey to fight ISIS, at Ankara’s request, in support of Turkey’s army and “vetted” Syrian rebels.
A military source said Syria’s army “has carried out its pledge and handed over a number of points to the Russian monitoring teams”, but that rebel groups had not withdrawn from their positions.
John Kerry, the U.S. secretary of state, conveyed the message to Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, in a phone call.
These plans were strained when increased conflict during the period of non-hostile behavior beginning with the start of the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha on Monday halted the delivery of at least 20 trucks providing food and medicine and other humanitarian aid to Aleppo.
Sustained delivery of humanitarian aid, along with a decrease in violence, is a requirement for that cooperation under an agreement Kerry and Lavrov reached last week.
Earlier Thursday, activists said the cease-fire was still holding despite some violations.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is expressing frustration at Washington’s refusal to publish the Syrian cease-fire deal reached with Russia, but says Moscow won’t unilaterally release it.
The UN Security Council, meanwhile, was to meet later to discuss whether to endorse the truce, billed as the “last chance” to end the five-year war.
The Security Council, being led by New Zealand for the month of September, was also due to hold a high-level meeting on Syria on Thursday.
“This briefing is not going to happen and mostly likely we’re not going to have a resolution of the Security Council because the USA does not want to share those documents with the members of the Security Council and we believe that we can not ask them to support a document which they haven’t seen”, Churkin said.
The General Command has called the bombing a “serious and blatant aggression” against Syrian forces, and said it was “conclusive evidence” that the United States and its allies support IS militants. Russian Federation intervened with its air force on the side of President Bashar Assad’s government a year ago, turning the tide of the war in his favour. The opposition said government forces and their allies bombarded several areas across the country, mostly in Aleppo and the nearby province of Idlib in the north of the country. The Russian Defense Ministry only mentioned that it had military observers on the road and said nothing about troop deployment.
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“Humanitarian conditions are very hard”.
