Syria´s armed forces said coalition aircraft hit a Syrian military position near the Deir Ezzor airport in the country´s east, in what appears to have been the first time coalition forces have hit a Syrian regime target. However, the cease-fire does not apply to attacks on the Islamic State group.
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The cease-fire that went into effect Monday is part of a U.S. -Russia agreement that also calls for allowing humanitarian aid to reach besieged areas in Aleppo.
Three more died and 13 were injured in air strikes in rebel-held Idlib province on Friday, the Observatory said.
On behalf of the United States mission, a spokesperson said that they are focused on the implementation of the agreement brokered by Washington and Moscow, especially the humanitarian aid to reach those in need.
Earlier on Saturday, Russian President Vladimir Putin questioned the US commitment to cease-fire, suggesting that Washington wasn’t prepared to break with “terrorist elements” battling Assad’s forces.
But on Friday, the trucks were still waiting at the border with Turkey, said David Swanson, a spokesman for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad.
The Britain-based Observatory said the violence stemmed from clashes between insurgents and Syrian government forces and their allies in the Jobar district on the eastern outskirts of the capital amid a government effort to advance in the area.
The UN has alleged the Syrian government has refused to allow its aid deliveries into the stricken city.
A main opposition group, the Syrian National Coalition, said it rejects the presence of a “Russian occupation” force on the road and that United Nations peacekeepers should run the operation.
Friday’s UN Security Council meeting was cancelled at the request of both the United States and Russian Federation, diplomats said.
SANA says the shelling violates the cease-fire brokered by the US and Russian Federation that went into effect Monday.
Syrian state media said rebels violated the ceasefire by shelling government-held areas in the eastern Damascus neighborhood of Qaboun, wounding three people.
“Also, the Russian defence ministry describing an incident last night saying that Syrian forces close to that road came under attack by the rebels using small arms fire, and… were forced to redeploy to initial positions to protect any kind of demilitarised zone that was beginning to happen there”. The ceasefire applies to Syrian government forces and moderate opposition rebels fighting them.
The Pentagon did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the incident, but it acknowledged that USA special operations forces are accompanying Turkish and Syrian opposition forces battling Islamic State in and around the area of the Syrian border near Jarabulus and al-Rai. Al-Qaida and Islamic State group militants, who are excluded from the cease-fire, are not present in the area, he said.
The US military said it halted an air raid against Islamic State (IS) in eastern Syria after being told by Russian Federation that it might have struck Syrian government forces.
According to the agreement signed by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and US Secretary of State John Kerry in Geneva last week, both government forces and Islamist rebels will withdraw from a strategic Aleppo road where much fighting has occurred in the past few days.
The US is not known to have directly struck Syrian president Bashar Assad’s forces at any point during the five-year civil war.
Aleppo-based activist Bahaa al-Halaby denies that government troops withdrew from Castello road.
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Russian Federation has given fresh assurances it has impressed on the Syrian government it must allow aid into rebel-held east Aleppo and elsewhere in Syria, but said it needed reassurances that the USA was putting pressure on Syrian opposition groups to abide by their side of the bargain.
