In New York, the UN Security Council cancelled an urgent meeting that had been called to discuss whether to endorse the truce, billed as the “last chance” to end the 5-year war that has killed 300,000 people.
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The United States and Russian Federation said on Friday they wanted to extend the four-day-old ceasefire in Syria that they have co-sponsored, although the agreement looked increasingly shaky, undermined by increasing violence and a failure to deliver aid.
The United States accused Syria of blocking aid and warned it will not boost military cooperation with Russian Federation unless Damascus honours the truce agreement.
The aid impasse came as Russian Federation put pressure on the USA to release the detailed text of the agreement and urged Washington to allow the agreement to form the basis of a United Nations security council resolution next week.
The US-Russian deal calls for the truce to be renewed every 48 hours, and for Washington and Moscow to begin unprecedented joint targeting of jihadists if it lasts a week.
The ceasefire, which has been in place for four days, was reluctantly accepted by rebels who criticised it for being biased towards the Assad regime – but said they had no choice due to the desperate need for aid by the civilians affected by the war.
“Right now we are focused on the implementation of the agreement brokered by Secretary Kerry and Foreign Minister Lavrov, particularly the urgent need for humanitarian aid to reach Syrians in need”, a USA spokesperson said in a statement.
On Thursday, the Pentagon press secretary, Peter Cook, said discussions on a joint US-Russia centre to coordinate attacks on extremist groups, to include Isis and the former al-Nusra front, had not begun. The council was to hold closed consultations later Friday.
Under the terms of the ceasefire agreement, Russia’s task was to restrain the forces of president Bashar al-Assad’s regime while Washington leans on the rebel groups opposing him.
Savchenko said opposition forces were yet to pull back from the road. Russian Federation intervened with its air force on the side of President Bashar Assad’s government past year, turning the tide of the war in his favor.
“The U.S. and Russian Federation have brokered this deal and it is really up to them to ensure that all the terms of the deal are carried out”, she said.
Government-held areas were shelled in eastern Damascus, wounding three people, Syrian state media said.
The government blamed the armed opposition of violating the cease-fire in different parts of Syria, including a rocket attack on the government-held side of Aleppo that damaged a church. At the same time, the deputy chief of the Russian Reconciliation Center in Syria, Sergey Kapitsyn, said that radar images and visual observation also show that opposition groups did not withdraw from the road.
Both sides accuse each other of failing to withdraw from Aleppo’s Castello Road, the main route into the rebel-held area, which would be used to bring aid.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says Friday’s fighting is concentrated in the neighborhood of Jobar, next to Qaboun.
Forty trucks carrying desperately needed relief for the divided city of Aleppo were idling at a special customs checkpoint at the Turkish border, and the USA blamed the Syrian government for the holdup.
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.
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One US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said initial reports appeared to confirm the incident involving a small group of US forces. “Attacks on schools, attacks on hospitals have stopped”, said Jan Egeland, the adviser to the special United Nations envoy to Syria.
