UN Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura has warned that the aid could not move into Syria’s second city before the Castello Road supply route had been fully secured.
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Air strikes and clashes tested a fragile ceasefire in Syria Friday, September 16, as civilians waited for aid and tensions mounted between the deal’s brokers Russian Federation and the United States.
De Mistura noted that even the Russians were expressing frustrations with the Syrian government over its blockade.
“There seems to be little pullback by both sides [Syrian government and rebels] on that road to allow this aid in”, Al Jazeera’s Charles Stratford, reporting from Gazientep on the Turkish border with Syria, said.
“We have repeatedly affirmed that by banning aerial warfare in Syria, the death toll can be decreased by 70 percent”, Abdul-Ghani added. “These are days which we should have used for convoys to move with the permits to go because there is no fighting”.
The news service notes that, if confirmed, the casualties would mark the first time the US has directly struck Syrian government forces during the country’s long-running civil war. “So they could go on a minute’s notice”, said Jan Egeland, head of the United Nations humanitarian task force for Syria.
According to Syria’s official SANA news agency, the bombing took place on al-Tharda Mountain in the region of Deir ez-Zor and caused casualties and destruction on the ground.
“Our appeal is the following – it’s a simple one”, Egeland said.
‘Can well-fed grown men please stop putting political, bureaucratic and procedural road blocks for fearless humanitarian workers that are willing to go to serve women, children, wounded civilians in besieged and crossfire areas?’ Egeland said.
“I don’t really understand why we have to keep such an agreement closed”, Putin was quoted as saying Saturday during a trip to Kyrgyzstan.
A Syrian activist says Russian troops have deployed along a main road leading into besieged rebel-held neighborhoods of the northern city of Aleppo ahead of the possible arrival of aid convoys.
“No aid has arrived in Aleppo”.
“Today the withdrawal is supposed to happen, with aid entering tomorrow”.
He said the truce was largely holding, although “we’ve seen violations on both sides”.
Earlier on Friday, Russia said that only Moscow and the Syrian regime were fulfilling the truce deal.
It says the government has worked to facilitate the entry of aid convoys to Aleppo, but that armed groups have failed to withdraw their forces from the routes they would need to use and are committing “dangerous, provocative acts”. The forces had been tracking the position for a significant amount of time before the strike, and the location was in an area the coalition had struck in the past, it said. Another child died of wounds sustained earlier from sniper fire in al-Masharfeh, a government-held neighborhood in Aleppo city.
“Warplanes from the worldwide anti-jihadi coalition carried out four airstrikes today against Syrian forces surrounded by the Islamic State group in the Deir Ezzor air base”, the Russian army said in a statement.
Elsewhere in the same province, an airstrike Thursday on the IS-held town of Mayadeen killed at least four people and wounded dozens, said opposition activists and Deir el-Zour 24, an activist collective. “Shelling continues, people are dying and houses are being destroyed”, senior commander Viktor Poznikhir said, hinting at renewed tensions between Moscow and Washington, who back opposing sides in the Syrian conflict.
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The monitoring group confirmed that after the airstrike Islamic State attacked and captured an artillery battalion.
