Under the deal, if the cease-fire holds for seven days and humanitarian deliveries are allowed into areas besieged by the Syrian army, the USA and Russian Federation would set up a so-called Joint Implementation Center to focus on the militants and share basic targeting data.
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The U.N. Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura says “we have a problem” on getting humanitarian aid into Syria, despite the U.S. -Russia brokered deal.
Senior defense and military officials told The Associated Press that they are sorting out how the U.S. -Russia military partnership will take shape and how that will change where U.S. equipment and people will be deployed.
The UN said 20 trucks loaded with aid had crossed into a buffer zone between Turkey and Syria, voicing hope the supplies could be delivered to besieged rebel-held districts of Aleppo on Friday. It is particularly regrettable because normally during these days we are losing time, these are days which we should have used for convoys to move with the permit to go because there is no fighting.
Jan Egeland, the top humanitarian aid official in de Mistura’s office, said the “good news” from the cessation of hostilities was that the bloodshed has dropped – and that “attacks on schools, attacks on hospitals have stopped”.
“Our appeal is the following”, Egeland said.
“If they do that, we’re willing and able to go to all these places in the next few days – and we are very hopeful that we will indeed be able to do so”, he added.
The Britain-based Observatory, which relies on a network of activists on the ground, said one girl was killed when missiles fired by rebels hit a village in the southern province of Quneitra.
Lt. Gen. Vladimir Savchenko, the head of the Russian Reconciliation Center, said the Syrian army withdrew its armor, artillery and other weapons north of the Castello road early on Thursday, in line with the U.S. -Russia-brokered cease-fire.
It says Thursday that government forces will not start pulling out until the rebels begin to do the same. The withdrawals will make way for the Syrian Arab Red Crescent to establish checkpoints on the road and direct aid convoys in.
The United Nations urged Syria’s government Thursday to allow immediate aid deliveries to hunger-stricken civilians, after a fragile ceasefire was extended for 48 hours by Russian Federation and the United States.
But hours later Russian military spokesman Igor Konashenkov accused Washington of spinning “rhetorical fog” intended “to hide the fact that it is not fulfilling its part of the obligations”.
In a Facebook posting, Russia’s Defense Ministry said, “Only the Syrian army has been observing the ceasefire regime within these three days of implementation of the agreements while the US-led “moderate opposition” has been increasing the number of shellings of residential quarters”.
More military planners and targeting experts will be needed to identify and approve airstrikes against the al-Qaida-linked Jabhat Fatah al-Sham.
Gatilov’s remarks were reported on Thursday by the Interfax news agency.
Aleppo had been the center of fighting over the past months and Syrian government forces and their allies launched a wide offensive earlier this month, capturing several areas south of the city and putting eastern rebel-held neighborhoods under siege. “The regime is refusing to allow aid into Aleppo”, said an activist based in the city, Baraa al-Halaby.
SANA also reported violations of the cease-fire in the northwestern villages of Foua, saying sniper fire by insurgents wounded a Syrian boy there.
The United States and Russian Federation have backed opposing sides in the Syrian war that has killed hundreds of thousands of people, forced 11 million from their homes, and created the world’s worst refugee crisis since World War 2.
In the eastern province of Deir el-Zour, clashes and shelling over the past 24 hours between government forces and the Islamic State group in the provincial capital, also called Deir el-Zour, have killed at least three people, including a child, according to activists and state media.
That casualty toll is according to Deir el-Zour 24, an activist collective. In addition, air strikes against Islamic State militants in the town of al-Mayadin near Deir al-Zor had killed at least 23 civilians, it said. It wasn’t known who carried out the attack.
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The Syria cease-fire deal struck by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is created to pause the civil war so that the superpowers’ militaries can be jointly concentrated against the Islamic extremist groups operating within the chaos on the ground.
