The spike in violence, which has threatened to derail a shaky truce, has seen multiple fronts around Syria’s second city flare up as a new round of peace talks got under way in Geneva.
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Besides, in the morning of April 14, Jabhat al-Nusra detachments with the strength of up to 400 people supported by tanks and infantry combat vehicles after mass shelling from artillery and mortars launched an offensive on the positions of government troops in the locality of Handrat. Four violations have been registered over the past day in Latakia.
The United Nation’s envoy to Syria sounded out the opposition at talks in Geneva on the idea that President Bashar al-Assad could stay on in power symbolically, two opposition sources said on Saturday, but they both had summarily dismissed it.
If Syria’s ally Russian Federation was willing to put pressure on the Damascus government, and if the government delegation was serious about negotiation, then a deal could be done in the current round of talks, he said.
While Russia and the USA have brokered a partial cease-fire, which doesn’t apply to Islamic State or the al-Qaeda linked Nusra Front, disagreement over Assad’s future has stymied a broader settlement.
“We’re overwhelmed once again by fears of a government siege of Aleppo, after weeks of a ceasefire that may have just collapsed”, said Ali Saber, a 32-year-old father of one living in Aleppo.
Syrian government fighters, rebels and jihadists are battling for control of swathes of Aleppo province.
Bashar Ja’afari and his entourage were meeting with United Nations special envoy Staffan de Mistura Friday for the first time since the so-called “proximity talks” – in which the delegations meet separately with de Mistura – suspended for a break last month.
The Syrian government, which is backed by Iran, Russia and Lebanon’s Hezbollah group, and the main opposition faction, the High Negotiations Committee or HNC, which includes groups that are backed by Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
Syrian military forces have the opposition-held districts inside the city nearly completely surrounded.
BEIRUT (AP) Indirect peace talks between Syria’s warring parties have resumed in Geneva to the backdrop of escalating violence in the country’s north and a refusal by the Syrian government to negotiate a transitional government, a key opposition demand.
Medicins Sans Frontieres, also known as MSF or Doctors Without Borders, said it was “extremely worried” about the displaced people’s security and access to health care. “We’re talking about more than 100,000 people now sandwiched between Aleppo and the border and affected by this crisis”, HRW’s Gerry Simpson told AFP by phone from the Turkish side of the frontier.
Meanwhile, the U.S.-led coalition struck areas controlled by the Islamic State group near Syria’s border with Turkey, according to a Turkish news agency. The renewed fighting has undermined the fragility of the cease-fire that has largely held elsewhere in Syria.
The HNC and the government delegation are in Geneva for a fresh round of talks aimed at resolving Syria’s five-year war.
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The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the fighting between IS and government forces is concentrated in areas east of the town of Khanaser, which has changed hands several times in recent months.
