BEIRUT, Sept 13 (Reuters) – A nationwide ceasefire brokered by the United States and Russian Federation was mostly holding across Syria on Tuesday and efforts to deliver badly needed aid to besieged areas including the northern city of Aleppo got cautiously underway.
Advertisement
“Today calm appears to have prevailed across Hama, Latakia, Aleppo city and Rural Aleppo and Idlib, with only some allegations of sporadic and geographically isolated incidents”, de Mistura told reporters in Geneva. 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. There were no reports of deaths or injuries, however.
However, witnesses told Reuters that around 20 trucks carrying aid crossed into northern Syria from the Turkish border town of Cilvegozu, some 40 km west of Aleppo, a Reuters witness said, although the sources stressed the security situation could prevent the trucks from going far.
“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.
The U.N. said it would send its aid trucks into Syria only when it was confident that the ceasefire was being observed and that its workers were not in danger of attack.
Spokesman for the UN’s humanitarian office (OCHA), Jens Laerke, separately confirmed that no United Nations convoys have deployed across a border or within Syria since the ceasefire call more than 24 hours ago.
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 group has been in talks for weeks to merge with other insurgent groups so that it can market itself as a Syrian faction – a move that would anger the United States, which has urged Syrian rebels to distance themselves from al-Qaida-linked militants. On Tuesday, the United Nations said Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime was not allowing that to happen.
Residents and activists of the besieged rebel portion of Aleppo said that Syrian government helicopters had dropped barrel bombs on one neighborhood of the city and that loyalist forces were shelling a route meant to be used for the delivery of humanitarian aid.
But the Syrian government said that it would turn away any aid deliveries that had not been coordinated with Damascus and the U.N, according to state media.
The head of the city council for opposition-held Aleppo expressed concern that planned deliveries would be conducted according to Russian wishes and not meet the needs of an estimated 300,000 people living there.
The RIA news agency quoted Russia’s foreign ministry on Tuesday as saying Moscow and Tehran had no differences over the ceasefire deal.
Under the truce, al-Assad’s forces are no longer supposed to bomb Syria’s opposition.
Col. Sergei Kopytsyn says in a video call from an area near Aleppo that six people have been killed and another 10 have been wounded in the northern city since the truce went into force at sunset Monday.
It was not immediately clear if the rebels involved in the fighting were parties to the ceasefire.
The Islamic State and Jabhat Fateh al-Sham are considered terrorists by Russian Federation and the United States and are not part of the deal.
Advertisement
The Syrian military says its forces have shot down two Israeli aircraft – a warplane and a drone – near the Israeli-controlled part of the Golan Heights. “We have not yet received those authorization letters but we are eagerly hoping and expecting the government to issue them very soon”. “We’re now just trying to survive the day”.
