The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported only minor violations by both government and rebel forces in different parts of the country, but no deaths.
Advertisement
After some airstrikes and shelling in the early hours, “by early morning every report we have been seeing indicates a significant, significant drop in violence”, United Nations envoy Staffan de Mistura said Tuesday evening in Geneva.
The week-long, USA – and Russia-brokered cease-fire started at sunset Monday.
The extremist group was in talks with other rebel factions for a possible merger, a move that could dash Washington and Moscow’s hopes of distancing it from the wider insurgency and sabotage the truce.
The deal, hammered out by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov last week in Geneva, officially came into effect at sunset Monday.
The Russian military said Tuesday the cease-fire in Syria has been violated dozens of times in its first day by US -backed rebels.
This is why Syria’s largest insurgent groups have expressed doubts about the feasibility of the deal, which still allows for airstrikes against al Qaeda linked militant groups.
The truce brokered by Russian Federation and the United States began at sundown on Monday, in the latest bid to end a conflict that has killed more than 300,000 people since March 2011. A Syrian military source said armed groups had broken the ceasefire at 6 p.m. (10.00 a.m. ET) in Maan, attacking army positions with machine guns.
Mostafa Mohamed, the group’s director of media relations wrote on his Twitter account: “Let it be known. We are going to continue to execute [airstrikes] with precision, [and] ensure that as we develop targets, we fully understand them”, he said.
Lavrov also urged the US -led coalition to continue viewing Jabhat Fateh al-Sham as a terrorist organization and to carry out strikes on its positions.
“Syrian government forces have completely stopped shelling, except for the areas occupied by ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra militants”, Russian military official Viktor Poznikhir said Tuesday.
“This is one of the hard parts… to get the opposition to distance itself from al-Nusra [Nusra Front]”, the official said on Tuesday.
A Jabhat Fatah al-Sham commander in the northern province of Aleppo told The Associated Press the group could announce its merger with the ultraconservative Ahrar al-Sham group “in the near future”.
“The merger will not be bilateral”. Rebels say they fear the government or its Russian allies can use the presence of fighters from the former Nusra Front to justify broader attacks.
Lavrov’s comments came in response to recent remarks by White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest, who said on Monday: “We need to see Russian Federation make good on the commitments they’ve made in the context of this arrangement to prevail upon the Assad regime to observe the cessation of hostilities”.
A new ceasefire in Syria brought a full day with no combat deaths in the war between President Bashar al-Assad and his opponents, a monitoring body said on Tuesday, as efforts to deliver aid to besieged areas got cautiously under way. It was not immediately clear if the rebels involved in the fighting were parties to the ceasefire.
If implemented, the unprecedented military cooperation pact represents a massive shift in USA policy toward Russia’s involvement in Syria’s six-year civil war.
Ahmad al-Masalmeh, an opposition activist in the southern province of Daraa – where Syria’s crisis began in 2011 – says the region was also calm.
Advertisement
“People are going about their business, and children are even playing in the street”, Mohamed Omar, a civil defence volunteer in the rebel-held area of Aleppo, a city that has been devastated by the five-year conflict.
