The U.S. military has admitted that it may have unintentionally struck Syrian troops while carrying out a raid against IS on Saturday.
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All the warring parties are also sworn enemies of Islamic State, whose territory extends along the Euphrates valley from the Iraqi border, including around Deir al-Zor, up to land near Syria’s frontier with Turkey.
The Russian Defense Ministry said earlier Saturday the USA -led coalition killed 62 Syrian government troops and injured some 100 others in a round of airstrikes in eastern Syria’s province of Deir al-Zour.
It says “coalition forces would not intentionally strike a known Syrian military unit”.
Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst Marwan Bishara said Moscow used the incident to hit home the importance of communication between Russian Federation and the U.S. in military operations in Syria.
A Russian Defense Ministry official said Syria has informed them that 62 of its soldiers were killed in the airstrike.
A statement from US Central Command said the coalition conferred with the Russian military before the strike.
Military officials said that even once the centre is set up, airstrikes won’t start happening immediately.
“I don’t think that anyone in the U.S. government is necessarily taking at face value Russia’s or certainly not the Syrian regime’s commitment to this arrangement”, Toner said.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry reached agreement on five documents, which they said would not be publicly released.
“Since we could not agree on an approach to briefing the council that would not compromise the operational security of the arrangement, the meeting was canceled”, a spokesman for the United States mission said.
Russian Federation said on Thursday the Syrian army had begun withdrawing from the road.
The Syrian Army Command said that American warplanes had bombed an army base on Al-Tharda mountain at 5 pm, allowing “a wide terrorist offensive” by the Islamic State that allowed it to seize the base according to the New York Times.
Russia’s Defence Ministry said that if the coalition bombing was a mistake, it was evidence of Washington’s “stubborn refusal” to coordinate its actions with Russia’s government. The truce calls for a halt to the violence between the Syrian regime and rebel forces, but it does not cover militant groups considered terrorists, such as ISIS and Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, formerly known as al Nusra Front.
Earlier, Russian President Vladimir Putin had accused Syrian rebels of using a fragile ceasefire to regroup, as diplomatic tensions between Moscow and Washington simmered over a lack of humanitarian aid access.
The cease-fire took effect on Monday, and despite reports of violations, it has largely held.
“All the permissions the Syrian government was supposed to give have been given for humanitarian supplies to reach people in need in various parts of Syria and that the humanitarian convoy to eastern Aleppo is supposed to leave tomorrow morning”, Churkin said. “But this is a very risky route”.
Russia’s military says Syrian rebels have violated a cease-fire 55 times over the past day, including with strikes on military and civilian targets in the divided northern city of Aleppo.
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Syria’s conflict has killed more than 300,000 people and displaced half the country’s population since March 2011.
