The United Nations remains unable to transport humanitarian aid into Syria despite an ongoing ceasefire due to the Bashar al Assad regime’s failure to authorize the deliveries, the U.N.’s special envoy for the war-torn country said Thursday.
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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.
He said, however, that the delivery of humanitarian aid that was part of the agreement reached by Russian Federation and the United States had not taken place because Assad’s government had not issued the authorization letters that aid convoys need to pass through checkpoints.
The deal calls for Russian Federation to persuade Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to stop shelling rebel-held areas and allow humanitarian aid to go in.
“This arrangement. requires forces from both sides to pull back from Castello Road”, US Secretary of State John Kerry said last week. “At the same time, the “moderate opposition” led by the United States is increasing the amount of attacks on residential districts”, Konashenkov said.
In addition to rebel-controlled eastern Aleppo, UN convoys with the right permits are willing to go to Moadameya, Al-Waer, Talbiseh, Douma and other besieged areas, according to Egeland.
But the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitor, said Thursday that government forces were still on the road, and there was no official announcement of a withdrawal.
It was unclear whether the strike came from the United States, Russia, or the Syrian government, and it came a day after Russia said it had killed 250 Islamic State fighters near Palmyra in Syria’s central desert. “The reason we’re not in eastern Aleppo has again been a combination of very hard and detailed discussions around security monitoring and passage of roadblocks, which is both opposition and government”, he said.
“Our appeal is the following”, Egeland said.
The US and Russian envoys were to present to the council details of the agreement reached on September 9 that calls for a ceasefire, the delivery of aid and joint targeting of Islamist rebels in Syria.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based monitoring group, estimates that up to 430,000 people have been killed in the conflict, although an accurate estimate is nearly impossible to obtain.
The ceasefire deal, meant to bring humanitarian relief, calls for a halt to the violence between the Syrian regime and rebel forces.
The Syrian army captured the Castello highway two months ago, cutting off the last supply route of the rebels in the eastern part of Aleppo.
Syrian boys dive into a hole filled with water caused by a missile attack in Aleppo.
The ceasefire extension “provides us a critical window of opportunity to assist the people in need in east Aleppo”, said David Swanson, a spokesman for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
SANA says there were 23 violations of the truce deal in Aleppo on Thursday alone. Aleppo, however, is just one of many areas cut off from aid and other assistance.
The state-run Syrian Arab News Agency said that rebel groups had breached the truce by firing seven mortars Wednesday morning in the countryside near Homs.
The Pentagon still does not have answers to basic questions, such as to whether it would need a waiver on the suspension of the U.S. -Russia military relationship implemented since Russian Federation invaded Ukraine in 2014. Demilitarization of Castello Road is key to allowing further humanitarian access, US officials have said.
Elsehwere 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. The US says al-Nusra is linked to al-Qaida and is a legitimate target alongside Islamic State.
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Jens Laerke, a spokesman for the United Nations humanitarian office, said the aid convoys were awaiting assurances of safety in Syria’s volatile northwest.
