There have been a handful of violations on both sides, US State Department spokesman Mark Toner acknowledged.
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The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said it had not recorded a single civilian or combatant death from fighting in the first 48 hours of a ceasefire in Syria which came into effect on Monday night.
It’s the first time the United States and Russian Federation have forged an agreement that “paves the way for humanitarian aid access” and a no-military zone for people to use the highway, the activist said. These divisions boiled to the surface previously over President Barack Obama’s failure to use greater military might to enforce his demand that Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad relinquish power and, in particular, in September 2013, after the USA backed down from its threat to carry out a “shock-and-awe” assault on Damascus over the trumped up charge that the Assad government had used chemical weapons against civilians.
The Russian military, in comments carried by Interfax, said there had been 60 such violations, adding that most were the work of Ahrar al-Sham, a hardline Islamist rebel group which Moscow says has not accepted the ceasefire. “That the Russians and Assad simply bomb indiscriminately for days to come and we sit there and do nothing?”
Two convoys of lorries carrying aid crossed into Syria about 40km (25 miles) west of Aleppo on Tuesday but were not allowed to go much further, Reuters reports.
The U.N. envoy Staffan de Mistura hailed a “significant drop in violence” over the first 24 hours of the cease-fire, but said no U.N. aid trucks have yet moved across the Turkish border into Syria.
“Syrian government troops have completely stopped firing” except in jihadist-held areas, but “the same can not be said for armed units of the moderate Opposition controlled by the US”, said Viktor Poznikhir, a senior Russian military officer.
Last week, more than 70 NGOs said they would refrain from information sharing with the United Nations because they believe the Assad regime has been allowed to manipulate aid and has too much influence over the $4 billion relief effort.
Syrian state news agency SANA said rebels fired three shells at a government-held neighborhood in Aleppo.
The truce that began at sundown on Monday, agreed after marathon US-Russia talks in Geneva between Lavrov and Kerry last Friday, is part of the latest bid to end a five-year conflict that has killed more than 300,000 people.
On Wednesday, both Moscow and Washington spoke positively about the truce deal, with the Kremlin saying it raised hopes for a peaceful solution to the crisis.
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.
“In accordance with the Russian-US agreements, the existing 48-hour ceasefire is expiring today at 7pm [Moscow time – 16:00 GMT]”. Aid was expected to begin flowing into besieged rebel-held neighborhoods of the northern city of Aleppo in the coming days.
“Some groups are looking to gain political mileage out of this, and this is something we need to put aside”, he told Reuters.
Aid agencies say they are waiting in other cases for guarantees of safe passage from not just President Bashar al-Assad’s regime but also from other warring parties. “Today, calm appears to have prevailed across Hama, latakia, Aleppo city and rural Aleppo and Idlib, with only some allegations of sporadic and geographically isolated incidents”, Staffan de Mistura, the United Nations envoy for Syria, said in a news conference in Geneva.
“In addition to eastern Aleppo, U.N. humanitarian operations inside Syria are also ready to deliver life-saving assistance to other besieged and hard-to-reach locations. but only once access is possible”.
A diplomatic source, speaking to Al Jazeera on condition of anonymity on Wednesday, confirmed that the Turkish government’s involvement remains a major sticking point.
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The UN says it must get permission for most of its aid deliveries from Damascus.
