United Nations aid trucks are waiting north of Aleppo in Turkey, but a Syrian security source told AFP on Wednesday that the regime had yet to withdraw its forces from the key Castello Road running to the Turkish border.
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David Swanson, the spokesman for the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Turkey’s Gaziantep, said the agency had 20 trucks loaded with a month’s worth of food rations for 40,000 people waiting on the border.
Despite reservations from the Pentagon, President Obama ultimately approved the proposal, and Kerry soon after announced the USA and Russian Federation had brokered a ceasefire in Syria that would precede joint air strikes between the Cold War enemies.
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.
The Syrian cease-fire worked out by USA and Russian Federation, now in its third day, is allowing a rare look at the remains of Aleppo, Syria’s largest city.
Zakaria Malahifji, of the Aleppo-based rebel group Fastaqim, told Reuters that rebel groups intend to comply with the plan to withdraw 500 meters from the Castello Road in order to make it a neutral space, but the government must also pull back.
The decision, made by US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, comes two days after the start of the truce.
Under the truce that went into effect at sundown Monday, Assad’s forces are no longer supposed to bomb Syria’s opposition, Kerry said earlier.
He said the ceasefire appeared to be holding despite numerous breaches.
We also note that some armed groups controlled by the United States, such as Ahrar Al-Sham, announced directly their unwillingness to cease fire.
Residents in Aleppo have welcomed the lull in the fighting that has ravaged Syria, displacing more than half the population and leaving former economic powerhouse Aleppo divided and destroyed. The eastern neighborhoods where some 250,000 people live have been under government siege for most of the past two months. Capturing the opposition-held area of Syria’s biggest city would be a major boost for President Bashar al-Assad’s war effort.
Disagreements between the warring sides were blocking aid getting into opposition-held eastern Aleppo, Swanson added. “This is not something we could ever envision doing”, he said.
The primary USA goal of the agreement is to put an end to Syrian Dictator Bashar al-Assad’s relentless and indiscriminate fatal attacks, oftentimes targeted at women and children, and to ultimately reach a political agreement to remove Assad’s brutal regime from power, reports the New York Times (NYT).
Russian Federation is a major backer of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, while the United States supports some of the rebel groups fighting to topple him.
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Humanitarian aid has not been delivered because Syria hasn’t sent a letter of authorization to the United Nations, he said. The U.N. has repeatedly criticized the Syrian government for restricting access, especially to besieged areas, and for removing vital items from convoys. Medical facilities in rebel-held areas have been frequent targets for government bombings.
