Women walk on rubble in al-Shadadi town, in Hasaka province, Syria February 26, 2016.
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Fighting appeared to stop across most areas of western Syria on Saturday after a cessation of hostilities came into effect under a U.S.-Russian plan which warring sides in the five-year conflict have committed to.
“Russia is fully observing its obligations under the ceasefire”.
Opposition groups say they have recorded numerous violations by government forces across the country.
But there are weak spots in a fragile deal which has not been directly signed by the Syrian warring parties and is less binding than a formal ceasefire. The cease-fire excludes the Islamic State group and al-Qaida’s branch in Syria, the Nusra Front. “The fight against bandit groups considered terrorist by the United Nations will continue”, Rudskoi said, according to AP.
And a ceasefire, while beneficial, particularly to those civilians suffering bombardment from airstrikes, will not mean an end to the desire of opposition forces to rid Syria of the regime.
There were scattered skirmishes and bursts of artillery fire across some of the front lines, a vehicle bomb killed two people in the province of Hama, and Syrian government warplanes dropped barrel bombs on a village in Idlib province, without causing casualties.
A Syrian military source quoted by Reuters said the Syrian army “did not commit any breaches” against the rebels.
Syria’s state news agency says a auto bomb has exploded on the edge of a government-held central town, killing two and wounding several others.
Talal Sillo, a spokesman for the predominantly Kurdish Syria Democratic Forces, said Saturday that the IS fighters have attacked the town of Tal Abyad.
The Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov and the US Secretary of State John Kerry have spoken by phone, welcoming the ceasefire and, Moscow says, discussing ways of supporting it through military co-operation. The general said 74 opposition units had agreed to adhere to the deal.
The opposition alliance, known as the High Negotiations Committee (HNC), said in a statement that 97 factions and armed groups fighting the forces of President Bashar al-Assad will respect a two-week truce.
Nevertheless he said the frontline was quieter than before the agreement took effect.
“It’s hard to remember a calm night throughout the last four years, but yesterday was different”.
“In Damascus and its countryside… for the first time in years, calm prevails”, Observatory director Rami Abdulrahman said.
“In Latakia, calm, and at the Hmeimim air base there is no plane activity”, he said, referring to the base Russia’s warplanes operate from.
On the stroke of midnight, firing stopped in suburbs around the capital and the devastated northern city of Aleppo, AFP correspondents said, after a day of intense Russian air strikes on rebel bastions across the country.
At the same meeting, U.N. Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura announced that if the truce largely holds and humanitarian aid access continues, he will reconvene intra-Syrian peace talks in Geneva on March 7.
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The US-led coalition launched air strikes to try to repel them, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
