Moscow said on Friday the Syrian army had withdrawn from the Castello Road but returned its troops there after they came under fire from rebels.
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However the powerful Nour el-Din el-Zinki opposition group said that government forces were still on the road, the news agency said.
The fighting and shelling in neighborhoods on the edges of Damascus were the heaviest in weeks, according to activists and residents, sparking concern the fragile cease-fire may be starting to fray.
A USA military official said he was “pretty sure” targets mistakenly hit in the bombings were Syrian forces.
“Warplanes from the American coalition hit one of the Syrian army’s positions. near the Deir Ezzor airport”, the statement carried by state media said.
Humanitarian access hinges on control of the Castello Road, the main route into the besieged rebel-held part and a major frontline in the war, but so far there has been no progress towards opening it.
Fighters affiliated to al-Qaida and the so-called “Islamic State” group, who are excluded from the ceasefire, are not present in the area, he said.
Russian Federation on Friday said that only its ally, the Assad government, is respecting the ceasefire, but nevertheless suggested that the truce be prolonged by a further 72 hours.
The message was given during a Friday phone call between Secretary of State John KerryJohn KerryUS to Russia: “No joint Syrian operations if aid can’t get through Pentagon: “Not all terms” of Syrian cease-fire being met A clear signal on Georgia’s future MORE and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, the department said”.
But as well as a reduction in violence the United States also demanded that supplies be allowed to reach areas under siege across the country and especially in Aleppo, Syria’s second-largest city.
Russia, a key backer of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, accused the United States Thursday of failing to meet its obligations under the truce deal.
The Russian Ministry of Defense said ISIS militants launched an attack on the Syrian position after the airstrikes, Sputnik reported.
Two children were among 3 civilians killed in air strikes Friday on the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhun in Idlib province, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
On the ground, the ceasefire has been reluctantly accepted by rebels who call it skewed in favor of Assad but say they have no choice because of the desperate humanitarian condition of civilians in besieged areas.
The discussion comes as Syria is entering its fifth day of a U.S. -Russia brokered ceasefire, which has largely held.
Lavrov has said that Russian Federation would like to publish details of the cease-fire deal he hammered out with Kerry last week but that there are USA objections to such a move.
Reporter Dominic Waghorn said that these issues would be at the forefront of the UN General Assembly meeting next week, along with a new UN report about the Syrian regime’s use of chemical weapons such as chlorine gas.
BEIRUT (AP) The United Nations faces “a problem” in shipping humanitarian aid into Syria, the U.N. envoy for Syria said Thursday, pinning the blame squarely on a lack of authorizations from Bashar Assad’s government that has even disappointed the Syrian president’s key backer: Russian Federation.
If the aid starts flowing and the cease-fire holds, the expectations are that such a climate would pave the way for the restart of Syria peace talks that collapsed earlier this year.
“We call here on the Syrian government and friendly states to prevent the entry of any kind of aid to the eastern neighborhoods of Aleppo before its passage to Fua and Kafarya”, the group said on its FaceBook page.
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Speaking to reporters in Geneva, OCHA spokesman Jens Laerke said United Nations officials are waiting for assurances that conditions are safe enough for convoys to proceed from Turkey to eastern Aleppo.
