He said that aid dispatched Wednesday to towns, including Zabadani, under government-imposed siege in Damascus province, was enough for 93,000 people.
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Turkey has long pressed for a safe zone, backed up by a no-fly zone, inside Syria and has warned Kurdish forces it will not allow them to seize Azaz, which is held by rebel forces.
Merkel expressed support for the idea on Tuesday, and repeated it again on Wednesday at parliament.
Neither the United Nations nor the USA has directly accused Moscow of carrying out those air strikes, but the State Department said Monday the attacks cast doubt on Russia’s willingness or ability to stop the fighting.
Asked by reporters about Merkel’s initiative, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov snapped: “It’s not Merkel’s initiative, it’s Turkey’s initiative”.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel speaks in the German Bundestag in Berlin, Germany, February 17, 2016.
Schaefer gave no further details, however, on how such a no-fly zone would function. Such a scenario is nearly impossible to imagine in Syria.
On the same day Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said that the USA was against a no-fly zone in Syria but this did not prevent Russian planes from flying over Syria.
Meanwhile, Erdogan yesterday vowed Turkey would not allow the creation of a Kurdish stronghold in northern Syria, saying there was no question of Turkish forces stopping their bombardment of Syrian Kurdish fighters. “Weren’t we to act together?” Syrian government troops who have besieged dozens of rebel-held communities over the past three years are moving toward their biggest target yetopposition-controlled neighborhoods of the city of Aleppo, where some 300,000 civilians risk being trapped.
“The Syrian Arab Republic, in this regard, reaffirms the government’s commitment to deliver humanitarian aid to the people living in areas besieged by terrorists, and this does not have any relation to Geneva, Munich or Vienna meetings, or any other party”, the statement said.
Gatilov said “the implementation of the Munich agreements on (the) Syrian settlement has started”.
He said a working group on humanitarian access to the besieged areas has met and is set to again meet Thursday.
“We’re very skeptical”, said one European diplomat anonymously.
The deliveries are part of an agreement that world powers hope will lead to a “cessation of hostilities” by Friday.
One of the strikes hit a hospital supported by charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF), killing 25 people and prompting widespread condemnation.
The U.N.-facilitated aid operation was going ahead, a development that U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said in NY was “an incredibly important first step”.
“We’re very skeptical”, a European diplomat said anonymously. A new estimate by the Syrian Centre for Policy Research, however, says that 470,000 people have been either directly or indirectly killed by the war.
After a delay, more than 100 trucks headed to the besieged areas.
About 20 trucks had departed for Fuaa and Kafraya, two Shiite towns in northwestern Idlib province besieged by rebels, the Red Crescent said.
The U.N.’s humanitarian office says 13.5 million Syrians need assistance, while another 4.6 million Syrian refugees have fled the country since the violence began in March 2011.
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“Today, aid for 30,000 people will enter Mu’adamiyat al-Sham”.
