Tag Archives: Truce

U.S., Russia agree to extend truce to Aleppo

Residents walk near damaged buildings in the rebel held area of Old Aleppo

By Lesley Wroughton

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States said on Wednesday it had agreed with Russia to extend a cessation of hostilities agreement to include Aleppo where intense day-long violence between Syrian rebels and government forces killed dozens of people.

The State Department said the truce went into effect at 12:01 a.m. Damascus time on Wednesday, but acknowledged the fighting had not stopped.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said he was not surprised that fighting continued in some areas, adding both sides were working to communicate with commanders in the field.

Kerry, meeting with EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini at the State Department, said it was vital that both sides abide by the agreement. He called on Russia to use its influence over President Bashar al-Assad to stop the violence.

There was no immediate response from Moscow to the announcement of an agreement, but the Syrian army said it would implement a “regime of calm” in Aleppo for 48 hours as of Thursday.

The surge in bloodshed in Aleppo, Syria’s largest city before the civil war and biggest strategic prize, wrecked the first major “cessation of hostilities” agreement of the war, sponsored by Washington and Moscow, which had held since February.

In battles on Wednesday between rebels and government forces in western Aleppo, opposition forces said they were forced to retreat by heavy aerial bombing.

Russia’s U.N. ambassador, Vitaly Churkin, addressing a U.N. Security Council meeting on the situation in Aleppo, said an agreement would have been announced on Tuesday but opposition attacks in Aleppo had prevented it from happening.

“The deterioration in certain areas of Syria, including Aleppo, is a serious source of concern. The government forces are fighting off a large-scale offensive by the jihadists (in Aleppo),” he told the council.

STRENGTHENED MONITORING

Kerry said the United States was coordinating closely with Russia to finalize strengthened monitoring of the extension of the cessation of hostilities to Aleppo.

He said he expected a meeting of the International Syrian Support Group, a grouping of foreign ministers of European and Middle Eastern government chaired by Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, to meet within the next two weeks.

In Berlin, the German and French foreign ministers said achieving a ceasefire in Aleppo was critical to renewing peace talks.

“I believe everyone knows and can conclude that there could be no return to the political talks in Geneva if a ceasefire in and around Aleppo is not observed,” German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier told reporters.

In Geneva, a senior U.N. humanitarian official said the Syrian government was refusing U.N. demands to deliver aid to hundreds of thousands of civilians trapped by the fighting, including many in devastated Aleppo.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said dozens had been killed on both sides in what it described as the most intense battle in the Aleppo region in a year. Government forces were reinforced by allies from Lebanon’s Hezbollah, it said.

A rebel fighter said about 40 government soldiers had been killed, while rebel losses stood at 10 dead. A military source denied there had been heavy casualties in army ranks, but said dozens of civilians and many rebels had been killed.

Rebel sources said insurgents at one point captured a strategic location known as Family House, but later lost it after the government side sent in reinforcements.

A pro-government military strategist said the offensive failed to breach key army defense and supply lines in Aleppo.

During the Security Council meeting, U.N. political chief Jeffrey Feltman said a consolidated truce and greater humanitarian aid access were needed to ensure the next round of Syria peace talks – set for this month – were credible. Without progress, he said there was a “real risk of a failed political process.”

“The current levels of violence in Aleppo, in particular, negatively impact the ability of the Syrian parties to engage in negotiations,” Feltman said.

U.N. aid chief Stephen O’Brien told the 15-member council that life for the people in Aleppo was horrendous and they were “living under daily threat and terror.”

(Additional reporting by David Alexander in Washington, Tom Perry and Suleiman al-Khalidi in Beirut, Paul Carrel and Joseph Nasr in Berlin and Michelle Nichols at the United Nations; Editing by Peter Cooney)

Air strikes on Syrian camp kill 28 near Turkish border

A boy carries his belongings at a site hit by what activists said was a barrel bomb dropped by forces loyal to Syria's President Bashar al-Assad in Aleppo's al-Fardous district

By Suleiman Al-Khalidi

AMMAN (Reuters) – Air strikes on a camp housing Syrians uprooted by war killed 28 people near the Turkish border on Thursday, a monitoring group said, and fighting raged in parts of northern Syria despite a temporary deal to cease hostilities in the city of Aleppo.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the dead included women and children and the death toll from the air strikes, which hit a camp for internally displaced people near the town of Sarmada, was likely to rise.

Sarmada lies about 30 km (20 miles) west of the city of Aleppo, where a cessation of hostilities brokered by Russia and the United States had brought a measure of relief on Thursday. But fighting continued nearby and President Bashar al-Assad said he still sought total victory over rebels in Syria.

Syrian state media said the army would abide by a “regime of calm” in the city that came into effect at 1 a.m. (6.00 p.m. ET on Wednesday) for 48 hours, after two weeks of death and destruction.

The army blamed Islamist insurgents for violating the agreement overnight by what it called indiscriminate shelling of some government-held residential areas of divided Aleppo. Residents said the violence had eased by morning and more shops had opened up.

Heavy fighting was reported in the southern Aleppo countryside near the town of Khan Touman, where al Qaeda’s Syrian branch Nusra Front is dug in close to a stronghold of Iranian-backed militias, a rebel source said.

Government forces carried out air attacks on the area and rebels were attacking government positions around the town, pro-Syrian government television channel Al-Mayadeen and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Pro-opposition media said an Islamist insurgent carried out a suicide bomb attack against government positions in Khan Touman.

A TV station controlled by the Lebanese group Hezbollah, which is fighting alongside the Syrian army, said the army used a guided missile to destroy a suicide car bomb before it reached its target in that area.

Elsewhere in Syria, fighting persisted. Islamic State militants captured the Shaer gas field in the east of the country, the first gain for the jihadists in the Palmyra desert area since they lost the ancient city in March, according to rebel sources and a monitor.

Amaq, an IS-affiliated news agency, said Islamic State militants killed at least 30 Syrian troops stationed at Shaer and seized heavy weapons, tanks and missiles.

Russian war jets were also reported to have struck militant hideouts in the town of Sukhna in the same Palmyra desert area.

“FINAL VICTORY”

Assad said he would accept nothing less than an outright victory in the five-year-old conflict against rebels across Syria, state media reported.

In a telegram to Russian President Vladimir Putin thanking Moscow for its military support, Assad said the army was set on “attaining final victory” and “crushing the aggression”.

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least one person was killed overnight in rebel shelling of the Midan neighborhood on the government-held side of Aleppo, which was Syria’s commercial hub and largest city before the war.

Twenty rockets fell on government-held parts of Aleppo on Thursday, state media said.

But a resident of the rebel-held eastern part of the city said that although warplanes flew overnight, there were none of the intense raids seen during the past 10 days of air strikes.

People in several districts ventured onto the streets where more shops than normal had opened, the resident of al Shaar neighborhood said.

Another resident said civilians in several districts sensed a general trend toward calm. “From last night it was positive and my wife went out to shop and shops opened and people breathed. We did not hear the shelling and bombing we had gotten accustomed to,” Sameh Tutunji, a merchant said.

A rebel source also said that despite intermittent firing across the city’s main front lines, fighting had subsided and no army shelling of residential areas had been heard.

“Although we’re seeing less fighting today, the massive onslaught of violence over these past two weeks would make almost anything look like improvement,” the North Syria Director for aid organization Mercy Corps Xavier Tissier said.

“We aren’t going to celebrate a temporary break in targeted attacks on civilians and aid workers. The cessation of hostilities must hold for the long term,” Tissier said.

Rebels also said government helicopters dropped barrel bombs on rebel-held Dahyat al-Rashdeen al Junobi, northwest of Aleppo, and near the Jamiyat al Zahraa area, which saw a rebel ground assault pushed back on Wednesday.

The recent surge in bloodshed in Aleppo had wrecked a February cessation of hostilities agreement sponsored by Washington and Moscow, backers of the rival sides. The truce excluded Islamic State and the Nusra Front.

A spokesman for the mainstream opposition said the Saudi-based High Negotiations Committee (HNC) supported the deal but wanted the truce to cover all of Syria, not just Aleppo. It accused the government of violating it.

Syria’s foreign ministry said in response to today’s fighting: “The criminal violations of the regime of calm in Aleppo reveal without a doubt the true face of the armed terrorist groups supported by Turkey, Saudi, Qatar and other states, and that they only want blood and fire for Aleppo without caring if they kill Syrians and destroy their country.”

(Reporting by Suleiman Al-Khalidi in Amman and Lisa Barrington in Beirut; Editing by Dominic Evans)

U.S. says working with Russia on aid flow, truce in Syria

By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA (Reuters) – The United States is working with Russia to improve access to besieged areas in Syria and to stop the Syrian government from removing medical supplies from aid convoys, a senior U.S. official said on Wednesday.

Antony Blinken, deputy U.S. Secretary of State, said that major and regional powers were monitoring a fragile cessation of hostilities that went into force on Saturday to “prevent any escalation” but it was a “challenging process”.

“At the end of the day the best possible thing that could happen is for the cessation of hostilities to really take root, and to be sustained, for the humanitarian assistance to flow and then for the negotiations to start that lead to a political transition,” Blinken told a news conference.

The World Health Organisation said Syrian officials had “rejected” medical supplies from being part of the latest convoy to the besieged town of Moadamiya on Monday. WHO spokesman Tarik Jasarevic said they included emergency kits, trauma and burn kits and antibiotics.

“We are indeed very concerned about reports that medical supplies were removed from some of the aid convoys. This is an issue that was brought before the task force,” Blinken said, referring to the International Syria Support Group (ISSG).

“We are now working, including with Russia, to ensure that going forward medical supplies remain in the aid convoys as they deliver assistance.”

Russian officials were not immediately available to comment.

“The removal of those supplies is yet another unconscionable act by the regime, but this is now before the task force and we will look in the days ahead as assistance continues to flow to make sure that those medical supplies are in fact included,” Blinken said.

The humanitarian task force, chaired by Jan Egeland, meets again in Geneva on Thursday.

Another ISSG task force on the cessation of hostilities is handling reports of violations of the truce, which does not include Islamic State or the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front.

“We’re then able to immediately try to address them and to prevent them from reoccurring and thus to prevent any escalation that leads to the breakdown of the cessation of hostilities,” Blinken said, after talks with U.N. Special Envoy Staffan de Mistura.

“That’s the most effective way to try to keep it going and then to deepen it. But it is a very challenging process, it’s fragile and we have our eyes wide open about those challenges.”

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Janet Lawrence)