“This is what is supposed to happen, but there is nothing to give hope”, Zakaria Malahifji, of the Aleppo-based rebel group Fastaqim, told Reuters.
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The US State Department said late Wednesday that US Secretary of State John Kerry and his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov had spoken and agreed to prolong the ceasefire which began on Monday.
People pass damaged buses positioned as barricades in the rebel-held Bab al-Hadid neighbourhood of Aleppo, Syria, September 14, 2016. One was killed in al Hader in the northern countryside of Queintra, when opposition rebels fired shells on the area.
Staffan de Mistura put the blame squarely on a lack of authorisation from Bashar Assad’s government that has even disappointed the Syrian president’s key backer: Russian Federation.
A main opposition group, the Syrian National Coalition, said it rejects the presence of a “Russian occupation” force on the road and that United Nations peacekeepers should run the operation to guarantee the delivery of aid. Critics say the blocking of aid is merely an attempt by Syria’s government to gain an upper hand in that battle. Letters of permission from the Syrian government for humanitarian deliveries were not part of the deal. “The reason we’re not in eastern Aleppo has again been a combination of very hard and detailed discussions around security monitoring and passage of roadblocks, which is both opposition and government”, he said. I lived in Beirut during the early years of Lebanon’s civil war – days with cease-fires, even shaky ones, were generally safer than those without.
A main opposition group, the Syrian National Coalition, said it rejects the presence of a “Russian occupation” force on the road and that United Nations peacekeepers should run the operation. Savchenko said that rebel groups close to the crucial route did not appear to be carrying out a simultaneous pullback as agreed.
The SNHR report called on a joint U.S.
He says rebel groups do not support the truce, and locals expect them to break it.
Syria’s state news agency SANA said opposition fighters opened fire at a location along the Castello Road that was being prepared for Red Crescent representatives, and two people guarding the area were wounded.
The truce, brokered by Russian Federation and the United States, is their second attempt this year to halt Syria’s five-year-old civil war.
Twenty-three civilians including 9 children were killed in air strikes on an ISIS-held town in eastern Deir Ezzor province Thursday, a monitor said.
The ministry’s website said the footage would “provide transparency of ceasefire regime implementation in the Syrian Arab Republic by the sides”.
It wasn’t known who carried out the airstrike.
It aims to halt fighting between Assad’s forces and rebel factions, but does not include jihadists like the Islamic State group (IS).
The spokesman, Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov, told the Interfax news service that rebel troops continued to fire artillery at government forces and had not separated themselves from units loyal to a former affiliate of al-Qaeda that both the United States and Russian Federation have deemed a terrorist organization.
Aside from the reducing the bloodshed, the “second dividend” of the U.S. -Russia deal is humanitarian access, de Mistura told reporters in Geneva.
However, de Mistura said the Syrian government had not provided the necessary “facilitation letters”, or permits, to allow for convoys to reach opposition areas, disappointing even Russian Federation, the Syrian president key backer.
A key focus is rebel-held eastern districts of Aleppo city where around 250,000 civilians are besieged by government forces.
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The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the fighting between government troops and rebels is concentrated in the neighborhood of Jobar, next to Qaboun where rebels have had a presence for years.
