A new ceasefire in Syria brought a full day with no combat deaths in the war between President Bashar al-Assad and his opponents, a monitoring body said on Tuesday, as efforts to deliver aid to besieged areas got cautiously under way.
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The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said it had not received a single report of combatants or civilians killed by fighting in any areas covered by the truce.
He added that Russian Federation understands the necessity of the full implementation of the agreements reached, and that it is “in favor of extending the ceasefire across Syria for another 48 hours”.
He added that disagreements between the warring sides were blocking aid getting into opposition-held eastern Aleppo. The city’s 300,000 residents are in dire need of food, fuel and medicine.
The city, Syria’s biggest before the civil war that broke out in 2011, is now divided, and its rebel-held area is besieged by government forces. The eastern neighbourhoods where some 250,000 people live have been under government siege for most of the past two months. Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency said the Turkish Red Crescent had distributed meat from animals sacrificed for Eid al-Adha to 4,500 households in Jarabulus.
United Kingdom humanitarian aid spokesman David Swanson said “things are taking longer than we’d hoped” and described how warring sides were blocking aid reaching opposition-held eastern Aleppo.
“The main issue at this point is ensuring all parties to the conflict are on the same page”.
Toner said he had no estimate on how long it would take to set up the coordination center, but said discussions have been going on for several months, so he didn’t believe it would “be a matter of weeks”. Whether the truce will ever get off the ground will likely depend on whether Moscow can restrain its client dictator, who hours before the cease-fire began repeated his vow to recapture all of Syria by force.
More than 4.8 million people have fled overseas, and an estimated 6.5 million others have been displaced within the country, the United Nations says.
Zakaria Malahifji, of the Aleppo-based rebel group Fastaqim, told Reuters news agency that rebel groups intend to comply with the plan to withdraw 500 metres from the Castello Road in order to make it a neutral space, but the government must also pull back. “We want food to come in”, said Abu Jamil, a resident of the Ansari neighbourhood in the besieged east.
“The situation is still bad as the markets are empty”.
The Syrian army has meanwhile accused rebels of numerous violations since the ceasefire took effect on Monday.
Moscow “calls for the extension of the cessation of hostilities on all Syrian territory for 48 hours”, senior Russian military officer Viktor Poznikhir said in a briefing broadcast on state television.
But Syrian opposition official George Sabra blamed Damascus, saying the government’s insistence on controlling aid was obstructing its delivery to Aleppo under the agreement.
Russian Federation said it had targeted jihadists in Palmyra on Tuesday, in the first such strikes during the truce.
Under the guidelines set out in the ceasefire deal between the U.S. and Russian Federation, both countries have been mandated to monitor whether all sides are adhering to the ceasefire. “It is very positive”, said director Rami Abdel Rahman.
The ceasefire does not cover either Fateh al-Sham or Daesh (ISIS, ISIL).
From the rebel perspective, therefore, the truce agreement splits opposition ranks, could lead to the decimation of a powerful ally by Syrian, US, and Russian air power, and, in turn, could leave the more moderate factions vulnerable to future offensives by the Syrian Army and its allies.
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If the deal does hold, it could open the door to new peace talks to resolve the conflict, with Russian Federation saying Mr De Mistura could invite government and opposition representatives to new talks “at the very beginning of October”.
