The fighters, including some from the al Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front and Islamist group Jund al-Aqsa, took the village of al-Ais, the al-Ais hilltop and at least another in the same area in southern Aleppo province, the British-based monitoring group said. The mortars that were fired from rebel- held parts of Aleppo city hit Sheikh Maqsoud, state run Ikhbariyah television station said in a news flash.
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Foreign powers hope the pause in fighting can lead to peace talks to end the conflict.
“We believe the Syrian leadership and army are committed to the ceasefire, and the army will target armed groups only when they violate the truce by attacking civilians or army positions”, the opposition leader said.
The residential area is a mainly Kurdish inhabited quarter of the city that has been for weeks a frontline with heavy clashes between the Syrian Kurdish YPG militias and rebels in control of large parts of the eastern portion of the divided city. The United States sent dozens of special operations troops to northern Syria a year ago to advise opposition forces in their fight against the militant group Islamic State.
On February 22, Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Barack Obama adopted a joint statement on the cessation of hostilities in Syria on February 27, obliging both sides to influence different political forces in the country to achieve a ceasefire.
Ankara, which supports the rebels, has looked on with alarm at the YPG’s advance, as it is fighting its own insurgency in Kurdish areas in its south-east and views the Syrian Kurdish paramilitaries as another wing of the Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK), with which it is fighting. There were many casualties, it said, without giving an exact figure.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry said US Secretary of State John Kerry and his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in a telephone call on Sunday welcomed “the sharp decline in violence” and warned against “any delay in starting the process” of negotiations.
HNC member Riad Nassan Agha said a final decision on attending the Geneva talks would depend on issues including the degree of compliance with the truce and progress towards easing humanitarian conditions. Iran, along with Russian Federation, has strongly backed Assad.
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“We will go, God willing”, he said.
