Syria cease-fire holding, with only minor violations

Kerry also said the Syrian government must allow deliveries of humanitarian aid into besieged areas, including the rebel-held districts of Aleppo.

Syrian state media said armed groups had violated the truce in a number of locations in Aleppo city and in the west Homs countryside on at least seven occasions on Tuesday.

Under the ceasefire deal, during an initial period, all attacks are to stop except Syrian government attacks on those two jihadi groups.

The ceasefire marks the second attempt this year to halt Syria’s five-year-old civil war.

But that scenario is complicated by the fact that Jabhat Fatah al-Sham remains intertwined with several other groups fighting on the ground.

A US- and Russia-brokered ceasefire dubbed by Washington as perhaps the “last chance to save Syria” entered its first full day Tuesday, amid scepticism over how long it would hold. While skirmishes have been reported across the country, the Syrian Observatory of Human Rights says that no civilians have died since the uneasy peace began.

Responding to allegations that the agreement is flawed, Kerry said that while it is “less than perfect”, it is far better than Syria’s status quo.

The nationwide ceasefire in Syria brokered by the USA and Russian Federation began at sundown on Monday, coinciding with the Muslim Eid al-Adha holiday.

A main Syrian opposition group linked to several small, moderate rebel factions says they will deal “positively” with the truce brokered by the USA and Russian Federation.

Syria has been gripped by civil war since March 2011 with various terrorist groups, including Daesh, now controlling parts of it.

If calm holds for seven days, the US and Russian Federation would then cooperate on how to jointly combat the al-Qaida-linked group formerly called the Nusra Front and now known as Jabhat Fatah al-Sham.

The rebels said that until that happened they had “no choice… but to pursue the fight against the regime and its allies until the last bullet and the last fighter”.

“We haven’t heard any planes in the sky, and we haven’t documented any [cease-fire] violations in our area”, said Muhammad, an activist and lawyer. The talks dealt with, especially on the situation in the Middle East and North Africa, including the reinforcement of terrorist groups and the need for a battle without quarter against the Islamic State, Al Nusra and related, he said.

OCHA spokesman Jens Laerke says humanitarian aid teams are ready to move into areas such as the troubled northern city of Aleppo.

“What this means is it would take Syrian warplanes and their barrel bombs out of those skies and prevent the regime from doing what it’s done so often in the past, which is to bomb a civilian apartment or hospital and claim that in doing so they were really targeting al-Nusra”, he said.

State Department spokesman John Kirby said the plan did not call for a complete grounding of the Syrian air force, but rather to keep it away from USA -backed rebels and civilian targets.

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But the Israeli military said in a statement that two surface-to-air missiles fired from the Syrian position missed its aircraft. Another activist group, the Local Coordination Committees, reported shelling in Aleppo and the southern region of Quneitra.