A cease-fire brokered by the US and Russian Federation brought calm across much of Syria on Tuesday as residents of the northern city of Aleppo awaited an expected aid shipment.
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The deal, hammered out by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov last week, officially came into effect at sunset on Monday.
The Russian military said Tuesday the cease-fire in Syria has been violated dozens of times in its first day by USA -backed rebels.
But that appeared to die down and the Observatory said it had not recorded a single civilian death from fighting in the fifteen hours since the ceasefire came into effect at 7 p.m. (1600 GMT) on Monday.
It allows the Syrian government to continue to strike at Daesh and Al Qaeda-linked militants with the Jabhat Fatah Al Sham group, earlier known as the Nusra Front, until the U.S. and Russian Federation take over the task in one week’s time.
But, Assad’s forces can continue air strikes against the Islamic State group and al-Qaida-linked insurgents from the group once known as the Nusra Front.
If the ceasefire holds for a week, Moscow and Washington will then begin an unprecedented joint campaign to target jihadists, including IS and former Al-Qaeda affiliate Fatah al-Sham Front.
Later, Kerry’s spokesman said a “primary objective of this agreement, from our perspective, is to prevent the Syrian regime air force from flying or striking in any areas in which the opposition or Nusra are present”.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which has a network of activists around Syria to monitor the conflict, said “calm is prevailing on most of Syria’s territories”.
Eyewitnesss on both sides of divided second city Aleppo said the night had passed without opposition rocket fire into government-held areas or regime air strikes against rebel districts.
Two aid convoys, each of around 20 trucks, crossed into northern Syria from the Turkish border town of Cilvegozu, about 40 km (25 miles) west of Aleppo, a Reuters witness said, although with security a concern it was not clear how far into Syria they would go.
Syrian children played under quiet skies on Tuesday as a fragile truce held, but their parents were waiting for much-needed food, fuel and medicine to enter the country’s besieged areas.
The Syrian government said it would reject any aid deliveries to Aleppo not coordinated through itself and the United Nations, particularly from Turkey.
If the cease-fire is violated, the seven-day time period resets, State Department spokesman Mark Toner said.
Still, residents in Aleppo reported some airstrikes and shelling, including a barrel bomb attack by government helicopters.
Outside the scope of the truce, Turkey said air strikes by a US -led coalition had killed three fighters from Islamic State.
The latest death toll figure from the United Nations, which stopped tracking casualties in 2015, had said that 250,000 have been killed in Syria.
It quoted a Syrian military source which said two mortars had been fired in southwest Aleppo near Ramouseh and a nearby housing project. In another airstrike in Al Bab, one person was killed, the agency said. Rebel factions, meanwhile, have criticized the agreement for not imposing direct penalties for violations, and claim it could give Assad’s military a chance to try to expand its grip.
With depleting human and military resources, both sides are relying on continued support from either the U.S. and its allies (in the case of the Syrian opposition) or from Russian Federation and Iran (as is the case for President Assad).
The agreement aims to bring an end to fighting between President Bashar al-Assad’s loyalists and a wide range of rebels but excludes jihadist forces like the Islamic State (IS) group.
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Furthermore, the Russian military also maintains a strategically important facility in Syria – the naval facility in Tartus, which allows access to the Mediterranean Sea.
