But it is not clear whether the administration believes it is authorized to strike the Al Nusra Front as a target separate from al Qaeda.An activist group that monitors the Syrian civil war said that government forces are in control of most of the town after ISIL fighters withdrew to its eastern outskirts.
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The United States has called Syrian President Bashar al-Assad a murderer who kills his own people and says he can not be a part of Syria’s future.
The Russian military General Staff said on April 11 that Nusra Front was massing its forces around the Syrian city of Aleppo and are planning a large-scale offensive.
“No storming of the city of Aleppo is planned”, he said.
In a meeting with Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moalem, de Mistura urged the Assad government to abide by the truce and allow more humanitarian aid access. “Aleppo when there are clearly opposition groups there that are part of the cessation of hostilities”, State Department spokesman Mark Toner told reporters on Monday.
The jihadists seized the Syrian border town of Rai, roughly two miles from the Turkish border in Syria’s Aleppo province, in a counterassault against rebels fighting under the banner of the Free Syrian Army, according to the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. “Four of the first military advisers of the Islamic Republic’s army … were killed in Syria by takfiri groups”, it said, referring to hardline Sunni Islamists.
The UN’s De Mistura, who will host the talks, said the negotiations will focus on aspects of a peace roadmap calling for a transitional government, a new constitution and eventual elections.
Yuschenko noted that Assad, when asked about the prospects of political settlement in Syria and effective governing, told him “You see a great number of banners in Syria and Damascus today”.
“If a decision is made at talks in Geneva that it is necessary to hold such [a] parliamentary election, then it will be held”, he said.
Militants captured Tel al-Ais earlier this month after heavy fighting despite the U.S.-Russian-brokered truce, which excludes the al-Qaida-affiliated Nusra Front.
A fragile ceasefire has been in effect in Syria since late February, but jihadist groups such as al-Nusra Front and Islamic State are not covered by its terms. Opposition groups are talking about a “serious deterioration”, or possibly even “real collapse”, of the truce.
Washington had raised similar worries about the ceasefire ahead of the talks due to start on Wednesday, which de Mistura has described as “crucially important”.
U.N. Special Envoy Staffan de Mistura’s plea came amid stepped up fighting around the northern city of Aleppo, Syria’s largest, and elsewhere in the country’s northern and western provinces.
De Mistura travelled from Syria to Iran on Tuesday to meet with senior officials in Tehran, which along with Moscow is one of Assad’s key global backers.
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Turkey’s state-run news agency says five rockets fired from Syria have landed in a Turkish border town, wounding at least four people.
