Russian Federation issued its criticism after the United Nations said Syria hadn’t provided the necessary permission for its aid convoy to go to rebel-held eastern Aleppo, where 300,000 civilians are trapped.
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He accused Russian Federation of failing to use its influence with Assad to get humanitarian aid moved to the besieged areas. It was unclear whether the strike came from the United States, Russia, or the Syrian government, and it came a day after Russia said it had killed 250 Islamic State fighters near Palmyra in Syria’s central desert.
The Britain-based Observatory, which relies on a network of activists on the ground, said one girl was killed when missiles fired by rebels fell a northern village in the southern province of Quneitra.
SANA accused the insurgents of launching the attack, triggering retaliation by government forces.
Meanwhile, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said aid was expected to arrive in the rebel-held city of Aleppo. The Observatory on Thursday reported the first three deaths since the cease-fire went into effect on Monday night.
The truce brokered by Secretary of State John Kerry and his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov is meant to suspend the civil war for a week to reduce violence and allow humanitarian aid deliveries into besieged areas.
The ceasefire deal calls for the demilitarization of the key Castello Road into the city, and Russian Federation said on Thursday afternoon that Syrian armed forces were “fulfilling their obligations and have started a gradual withdrawal” from the route.
Rebel groups said they would not withdraw from around Castello Road until government forces did. Nour el-Din el-Zinki group said in statement that their observation posts in the area have confirmed that government forces are still on the road.
Twenty-four hours into the cease-fire, de Mistura said Syria had already seen a “significant drop in violence”, noting that the Syrian cities of Aleppo and Damascus, the country’s capital, remained relatively calm. Humanitarian access, along with seven days of reduced violence, are some of the conditions of the US-Russia deal.
The United Nations faces “a problem” in shipping humanitarian aid into Syria, the U.N. envoy for the war-torn country said Thursday, pinning the blame on the lack of authorization from Bashar Assad’s government that has even disappointed Russian Federation, the Syrian president’s key backer.
Speaking to reporters in Geneva, OCHA spokesman Jens Laerke said United Nations officials are waiting for assurances that conditions are safe enough for convoys to proceed from Turkey to eastern Aleppo.
Speaking in Geneva, he said the trucks are in a “special customs zone” on the Turkish border.
Mr Kerry said the delays, which have left 40 lorries of vital supplies stuck on the Syria-Turkey border for five days, were “repeated and unacceptable”, and told the Russian foreign minister that Washington “expects Russia to use its influence on the Assad regime to allow United Nations humanitarian convoys to reach Aleppo and other areas in need”.
The east of Aleppo is in desperate need of aid after weeks of heavy fighting and a government siege that has lasted most of the past two months, with no aid entering since early July.
Russian Federation on Thursday said government forces had begun to withdraw from the area and accused rebel fighters of failing to pull back as agreed.
An activist with the opposition-aligned group Aleppo Media Center said people are hopeful this initiative will work, even though past agreements have fallen apart since the conflict began in 2011.
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Khan Sheikhun, like most of the surrounding province, is controlled by an alliance of rebels, hardline Islamists and jihadists such as the Fateh al-Sham Front, formerly Al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate.
