“Commenting on the Turkish regime’s statements highlighting its intention to send materials disguised as humanitarian aid to Aleppo city, the Syrian Arab Republic announces its rejection to allow such materials to enter no matter who provides them… without co-ordination with the Syrian government and the United Nations”, the Foreign Ministry said.
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A week-long cease-fire took effect in Syria at sundown on Monday, but there have been disturbing reports of new violence that has killed dozens, including children, hours before the fighting temporarily abated.
Syria has suffered unspeakable losses over the last five years since Bashar al-Assad’s government violently suppressed a peaceful protest against his rule, unleashing a downward spiral of violence that killed hundreds of thousands of victims and displaced millions.
Over the weekend, Turkey said it was already making preparations to deliver humanitarian aid to Aleppo, where some 250,000 people in the rebel-held east are under government siege.
But she said that “there hasn’t been a breakthrough in accessing new areas” without any guarantees on security. Military planes belonging to the Syrian regime and Russian Federation, which began its military operations there against ISIS and other militant groups last September, regularly target rebel-held areas.
It is hoped the ceasefire will provide a window for the delivery of aid to the hundreds of thousands of Syrians in desperate need of food, medicine and other essentials.
In June, activists said the regime pounded the area with barrel bombs hours after food was delivered there for the first time in almost four years.
The initial truce of 48 hours, come up by Russian Federation and the United States, tries to finish the combats between the forces of the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, and the diverse armed groups that operate in the country, and it came into force yesterday in the midnight.
The ceasefire is the second such concerted attempt to bring peace to Syria this year.
In the wake of the earlier failures, Kerry addressed criticism that the latest deal is flawed. “But flawed compared to what?”
A previous USA and Russian-brokered ceasefire negotiated in February broke down in a matter of weeks. “This is the best thing we could think of”. But human rights groups monitoring the situation reported several airstrikes in the Aleppo region and near Raqqa, ISIS’ de facto capital, just days after the truce took effect.
The Syrian civil war has killed hundreds of thousands of people and forced more than 5 million to flee the country, spawning an global refugee crisis. But the group’s founder, Rami Abdulrahman, said the actual number of deaths is closer to 430,000.
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The dead included more than 52,000 fighters from other countries, he said.
