Since the cease-fire came into effect at sunset on September 12, accusations have been made against both rebels and government forces of sporadically violating it, but it appears to have largely held. The deal, the latest in a series of attempts to halt the fighting, calls in part for the cease-fire to be renewed every 48 hours and places a priority on delivering humanitarian aid to civilian areas.
Advertisement
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s agreement stipulates that all parties in Syria must participate a “genuine reduction of violence”, for a period of one week.
Lavrov and Kerry also discussed jointly fighting Jabhat Fatah al Sham and Islamic State, the ministry said.
The ceasefire deal calls for a halt to the violence between the Syrian regime and rebel forces, but does not cover militant groups considered terrorists, such as ISIS and Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, formerly known as al Nusra Front.
The chances of the cease-fire holding in many ways rests with what happens to aid deliveries and whether the regime allows humanitarian assistance to be distributed without either blocking it or directing it where it wants the help to go for political purposes, say activists.
However, some 20 trucks carrying U.N aid and destined for rebel-held eastern Aleppo remained in the customs area on the border with Turkey on Wednesday “because of lack of de facto assurances of safe passage by all parties”, Jens Laerke, deputy spokesman for the United Nations office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, told The Associated Press in an email.
The eastern neighbourhoods where some 250,000 people live have been under government siege for most of the last two months. According to an investigation by Britain’s Guardian newspaper on Monday U.N. -sponsored aid convoys only reach “on average 33 percent of people to whom access was requested”.
Despite that, two trucks in the Turkish controlled northern Syrian town of Jarablus did get through on Wednesday, delivering food and toys.
‘The struggle with Islamic State continues, ‘ Poznikhir said.
But there is still deep scepticism about whether the truce will last, with the Opposition yet to officially sign on. There is relative relief.
Residents of eastern Aleppo are reported to be in desperate need of fuel, flour, wheat, baby milk and medicines.
In the lead-up to the cease-fire, 40 days of fighting in Aleppo killed almost 700 civilians, including 160 children, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. “Here is the line that separates civilization and backwardness, barbarity, the line between darkness and light”, said tourism minister Bishr Riyad Yazigi, speaking in the Ramouseh area of the divided city.
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 Syrian government says it will only allow aid co-ordinated through itself and the United Nations to reach Aleppo.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the war through contacts on the ground, said it had recorded no deaths during the first 48 hours of the ceasefire, which came into effect on Monday night, although six civilians had died in Syrian strikes on hardline Islamists excluded from the truce.
“The violations are negligible”.
“I think the most important [threat to the agreement] is that the Syrian government has not relinquished its goal of recapturing all Syria in the medium- to long-term”, says Robert Ford, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington and former ambassador to Damascus.
Since the beginning of Russian intervention in Syria, Russian President Vladimir Putin sought U.S.
Advertisement
Peskov said that’s the “key task, without which further progress can hardly be possible”.
