The UN Special Envoy for Syria said Tuesday that a ceasefire brokered by the United States and Russian Federation was largely holding, adding that more time was needed to assess the situation on the ground.
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Russian ambassador to the U.N. Vitaly Churkin said there was no point in briefing the council if the USA did not want to say exactly what was in the deal.
“We do not know if this is a real withdrawal or repositioning”, said the Observatory, but confirmed the Russian information and noted this could pave the way for aid to reach people inside.
The UN had hoped forty trucks of food, enough to feed 80,000 people for one month, could be delivered to besieged rebel-held eastern parts of Aleppo as soon as possible.
But as of Thursday, U.N. aid trucks have not been given the go-ahead by the Assad regime to enter northern Syria from Turkey.
Russian Federation said the Syrian army had begun to withdraw from a road into Aleppo yesterday, a prerequisite for pressing ahead with worldwide peacemaking efforts as the government and rebels accused each other of violating a truce. Both Russia and the U.S. pledged to pressure both sides in the conflict to stick to the tenets of the ceasefire.
Russia’s military says its troops and vehicles have started to withdraw.
Kerry and Lavrov are expected to attend, diplomats said.
Russian Federation has accused US-backed Syrian rebels of failing to hold their end of the bargain in a ceasefire which only began four days ago.
“At the same time we’re puzzled by the statements made by various representatives of the US State Department and the Pentagon about the prospects of Russian Federation fulfilling the agreements reached on Syria”.
US President Barack Obama was due to gather top national security aids on Friday – including his secretaries of state and defense – with the shaky ceasefire set to dominate a meeting ostensibly about countering the Islamic State group (IS).
The temporary ceasefire agreed to by the US and Russian Federation calls for 48-hour windows of calm that must be renewed by the two sides.
It aims to halt fighting between President Bashar al-Assad’s forces and rebel factions, but does not include jihadists like the Islamic State group (IS).
Elsewhere in the same province, an airstrike Thursday on the IS-held town of Mayadeen killed at least four people and wounded dozens, said opposition activists and Deir el-Zour 24, an activist collective.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported the casualties, saying they were two children.
According to the monitor, those were “the first strikes on an area where there are no jihadists since the start of the ceasefire”. Castello Road, nicknamed “Death Road” is said to be the only way into rebel-held neighborhoods in eastern Aleppo.
UN Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura has warned that the aid could not move into Syria’s second city before the Castello Road supply route had been fully secured.
But promised authorization from Damascus for large-scale humanitarian convoys had not yet been received. The breakdown threatens a planned United Nations effort to provide aid to Syria’s largest city, Aleppo, where upwards of 250,000 people are trapped by the hostilities. They said it will take time to share and analyze the recommended target data and make certain that innocent civilians or allies aren’t hit.
OCHA spokesman Jens Laerke said “it is my understanding” that United Nations officials are waiting for assurances that conditions are safe enough for convoys to proceed from Turkey to eastern Aleppo.
The reason for the hold-up appeared to be the continuing presence of some troops from both the Syrian government and the rebel side on the Castello road, a key thoroughfare leading from the besieged city of Aleppo to the border with Turkey, where a convoy of lorries loaded with vital supplies were waiting to cross over into Syria. The UN humanitarian adviser Jan Egeland also blamed armed opposition groups for delaying aid deliveries. The other was killed by a sniper in the regime-held area of al Masharqa in western Aleppo.
And a sniper later shot dead another person in the city’s rebel-held east, it added.
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Moscow also accused Washington of failing to get rebels to separate on the ground from extremists, as per the ceasefire deal.
