There was also new confusion in the early hours of the cease-fire: Secretary of State John Kerry said the United States would be able to approve Syrian government strikes, but the State Department reversed those comments less than two hours later.
Advertisement
In the northern city of Aleppo, where the fighting has concentrated over the past few months, opposition activists said rebel-held parts of the city were calm on Tuesday morning but many people were still hunkering down in their homes, fearful of going out.
“The armed opposition in Syria now faces what is perhaps its biggest and most momentous decision since they chose to take up arms against the Assad regime in 2011”, says Charles Lister, an analyst at the Middle East Institute and author of the book “The Syrian Jihad”.
Rami Abdurrahman from the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said there were minor truce violations in central Hama province.
About 20 trucks carrying aid have crossed into northern Syria from the Turkish border town of Cilvegozu, as a ceasefire across Syria largely holds for a second day, a witness has said.
In the phone conversation, Wang said that China strongly urges the DPRK and the related parties to keep calm and exercise restraint and refrain from taking any new action again that would escalate the tension. “Now he is allowed.to target Nusra”.
The initial 48-hour truce came into force at 7pm local time across Syria except in areas held by extremist groups like ISIL.
Syrian state media quoted private sources as saying the government had given its approval to the deal but there has been no official response.
“We fear that Russian Federation will classify all the Free Syrian Army as terrorists”, as it was unclear how the deal defined “terrorist groups”, he added. And without these factions, the rebels don’t stand a chance against government forces, making the prospects of peace in Syria are hard to say the least. The ceasefire would give humanitarian groups an opportunity to provide food and aid to hundreds of thousands of Syrian citizens in besieged cities such as Aleppo. He made no mention of the ceasefire agreement, but said the army would continue its work “without hesitation, regardless of any internal or external circumstances”.
At least seven people, including three children, were killed in rebel-held eastern Aleppo Monday, according to UK-based monitoring group the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR).
A cease-fire brokered by the United States and Russian Federation is set to begin at sunset in Syria amid mixed messages of commitment from various rebel factions but with verbal backing by President Bashar Assad’s government.
One monitoring group reports five violations occurred in and around Aleppo in the ceasefire’s first two hours, while state-run Syrian Arab News Agency said rebels were responsible for two violations in the city.
There have been extensive doubts expressed among many entangled in the conflict that the cease-fire, timed to coincide with the start of the Muslim holiday Eid al-Adha, will be respected.
The ceasefire deal is backed by countries ranging from Assad’s ally Iran to Turkey, one of the main supporters of groups fighting to overthrow him.
Advertisement
In the text seen by AFP, rebels wrote they would “deal positively with the idea of the ceasefire”, but did not explicitly back it.
