Moscow-Russian Foreign Affairs Minister Sergei Lavrov called on the United States to reveal the details of the bilateral agreement on Syria, adding that such a deal should be made official by translating it into an worldwide resolution.
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The deal marks the second attempt this year to try to reduce violence in war-torn Syria, where the 5½-year conflict has killed more than 250,000 people and displaced half the country’s population of 11 million.
United Nations envoy Staffan de Mistura hailed a “significant drop in violence” over the first 24 hours of the cease-fire, but said no United Nations aid trucks have yet moved across the Turkish border into Syria.
The chief of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group, said Wednesday there were no reported civilian casualties in the first 36 hours of the cease-fire.
If the ceasefire holds for a week, the USA and Russian Federation will coordinate military airstrikes on militant groups – namely the self-proclaimed Islamic State and Jabhat Fateh al-Sham.
The worldwide community’s first goal is to deliver aid to civilians in areas such as the rebel-held half of Aleppo, Syria’s biggest city before the war, which has been divided for years into opposition and government zones and where the opposition area is now under a total blockade. “We want food to come in”, said Abu Jamil, a resident of the Ansari neighbourhood in the besieged east.
“We haven’t seen the humanitarian access yet so we’re still continuing to assess this, talking to the Russians,”Toner he said”.
It states that the Syrian government should be notified – and not given the task of approving – aid trucks being delivered to rebel-held areas. “That the Russians and Assad simply bomb indiscriminately for days to come and we sit there and do nothing?”
UN Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon says disagreements between warring sides and safety concerns are causing the delays.
The state-run Syrian Arab News Agency reported that “armed groups” breached the truce with mortar fire, citing a military source; the news agency also reported there were no deaths.
The US-Russian deal is part of the latest bid to end fighting between President Bashar al-Assad’s loyalists and a wide range of rebels, but excludes jihadist forces like the Islamic State (IS) group.
“It’s crucially important that the necessary security arrangement should be given so that they be allowed to cross the lines”. The rebel-held eastern side of Aleppo, the most bitterly contested part of the country, has been subjected to repeated blockades over the past month after pro-government troops captured the last route out.
But the United Nations says its trucks, scheduled to deliver supplies to the devastated city of Aleppo, have been unable to enter Syria.
Russian Federation launched its operation in Syria previous year to support ally President Bashar Assad’s forces.
Staffan De Mistura, the UN’s special envoy for Syria, noted a “significant drop in violence” since the ceasefire went into effect Monday.
If the ceasefire holds for seven days, Russian Federation and the United States will establish a joint center to coordinate airstrikes against terrorist groups in Syria. A day earlier, the government said rebels had targeted the Castello road, the only remaining artery by which aid reaches the eastern, rebel section of Aleppo.
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On the humanitarian front, Mr.de Mistura said that to make sure that aid can reach those in need, there should be no conditions or preconditions to its delivery.
