Tag Archives: Aleppo

Kerry warns Assad of repercussions if truce, transition fails

Journalists and civilians stand near the damage after rockets fired by insurgents hit the al-Dabit maternity clinic in government-held parts of Aleppo city

By Lesley Wroughton

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry warned President Bashar al-Assad on Tuesday of “repercussions” if he does not stick to a ceasefire brokered by Russia and the United States and move forward with a political transition aimed at ending Syria’s war.

But Kerry said he still hoped diplomatic efforts could restore a nationwide Feb. 27 ceasefire to include Aleppo, which has felt the brunt of increased fighting in recent weeks.

“If Assad does not adhere to this, there will clearly be repercussions, and one of them may be the total destruction of the ceasefire and then go back to war,” Kerry told reporters a day after emergency meetings in Geneva.

“I don’t think Russia wants that. I don’t think Assad is going to benefit from that. There may be even other repercussions being discussed,” he added.

It was unclear what Kerry meant by repercussions. Obama administration officials previously warned of consequences for Assad’s action in the country’s long-running civil war, but critics say Washington has failed to follow through with a more aggressive response.

Obama warned earlier in the conflict against the use of chemical weapons by Assad’s forces, setting a red line that would trigger U.S. military action. But he backed away from a threatened bombing campaign.

Kerry said that without a ceasefire in Aleppo, Syria’s largest city before the civil war erupted in 2011, the violence there was in danger of spiraling out of control. The plan now being worked on to ensure a more lasting ceasefire would try to separate rival forces from militias, which are not covered by the ceasefire.

“The line they are trying to draw now would prohibit any kind of incursion of Aleppo, it will not allow Aleppo to fall,” Kerry said. He added that the truce was holding in areas of Damascus and Latakia region where he said there had been a “meaningful” drop in violence.

Kerry said the United States was trying to determine which opposition group was responsible for a rocket attack on a hospital in Aleppo on Tuesday, saying there was no justification for such “horrific violence.”

He repeated the United States would never accept a transition that included Assad.

“If Assad’s strategy is to somehow think he’s going to just carve out Aleppo and carve out a section of the country, I got news for you and for him – this war doesn’t end,” Kerry said.

“It is physically impossible for Assad to just carve out an area and pretend he is somehow going to make it safe while the underlying issues are unresolved in this war.”

(Additional reporting by David Alexander; Editing by Peter Cooney)

Rebels bombard Aleppo killing 19 and hitting a hospital

A Syrian army soldier helps to evacuate civilians after rockets fired by insurgents hit the al-Dabit maternity clinic in government-held parts of Aleppo city

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Rebels bombarded government-held areas of Aleppo with rockets on Tuesday, killing 19 people and hitting a hospital, while also launching a ground assault on army-held positions of the divided city, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The Syrian army said insurgents had launched a widespread assault and that it was responding. State-run Syrian news channel Ikhbariya said three women were killed and 17 more people wounded at the al-Dabit maternity clinic.

The army statement said the attack was at “a time when international and local efforts are being made to shore up the (cessation of hostilities agreement) and to implement … calm in Aleppo”.

The Observatory said the hospital had been heavily damaged.

In rebel-held parts of Aleppo, the Observatory said there had been three air strikes, citing information of an unconfirmed number of people killed.

The Observatory said 279 civilians have been killed in Aleppo by bombardments since April 22, with 155 of them killed in opposition-held areas, and 124 killed in government-held districts.

The ground assault focused on the Jamiat al-Zahraa area of the city, where insurgent groups detonated tunnels and took a few buildings before advances were checked by the arrival of reinforcements on the government side, the Observatory said.

A Syrian army source said a car bomb was used in an attack nearby, adding that the assault had failed. The source added that “matters had been moving toward Aleppo being included in the truce, but it seems there are those who do not want that”.

Asked if it reduced the chances of a truce in Aleppo, the source said: “Certainly, because practically the one carrying out these actions does not want a truce”.

(Reporting by Lisa Barrington and Tom Perry, editing by Richard Balmforth)

Talks closer to a Syrian truce to Aleppo

US Secretary of State Kerry gestures next to UN Special Envoy on Syria de Mistura during a news conference in Geneva

By Suleiman Al-Khalidi and Lesley Wroughton

AMMAN/GENEVA (Reuters) – U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Monday talks were closer to extending a Syrian truce to Aleppo, the divided northern city where a sharp escalation of violence in recent weeks has torpedoed peace talks.

Kerry was in Geneva for talks with other dignitaries to try to revive the first major ceasefire of the five-year Syrian war, which was put in place in February with U.S. and Russian backing but has since all but collapsed.

Syria announced temporary local truces in other areas last week but has so far failed to extend them to Aleppo, where government air strikes and rebel shelling have killed hundreds of civilians in the past week, including more than 50 people in a hospital that rebels say was deliberately targeted.

The Aleppo fighting threatens to wreck the first peace talks involving the warring parties, which are due to resume at an unspecified date after breaking up in April when the opposition delegation walked out in anger.

“We’re getting closer to a place of understanding, but we have some work to do, and that’s why we’re here,” Kerry said at the start of a meeting with Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir.

After meeting Jubeir and U.N. envoy Staffan de Mistura, Kerry said he hoped for more clarity in the next day or so on restoring the nationwide ceasefire. The United States and Russia had agreed to keep extra staff in Geneva to work on it.

“Both sides, the opposition and the regime, have contributed to this chaos, and we are working over the next hours intensely in order to try to restore the cessation of hostilities,” Kerry said. De Mistura said he would travel to Moscow for talks.

The civil war in Syria has killed hundred of thousands of people, driven millions from their homes, created the world’s worst refugee crisis and provided a base for Islamic State militants who have launched attacks elsewhere.

The fighting has drawn in global powers and regional states, while all diplomatic efforts to resolve it have foundered over the fate of President Bashar al-Assad, who refuses to accept opposition demands that he leave power.

The United States and Russia have taken the leading roles in the latest diplomatic initiative, which began after Moscow joined the war last year with an air campaign that tipped the balance of power in favor of Assad, its ally.

So far, Syria has announced a “regime of calm” — a temporary local truce — in the Eastern Ghouta suburb of Damascus and the countryside of northern Latakia province, from Saturday morning. The Latakia truce was for three days and the Ghouta truce, initially for 24 hours, was also extended by another 48.

Both are areas where there has been heavy fighting, but Aleppo remains the biggest prize for Assad’s forces, who are hoping to take full control of the city, Syria’s largest before the war. The nearby countryside includes the last strip of the Syria-Turkish border in the hands of Arab Sunni rebels.

A Russian military official, General Sergei Kuralenko, said talks were under way on extending the regime of calm to Aleppo.

CIVILIANS KILLED

The opposition accuses the government of deliberately targeting civilians in rebel held parts of Aleppo to drive them out, and says the world must do more to force Damascus to halt air strikes.

For its part, the government says rebels have been heavily shelling government-held areas, proving that they are receiving more sophisticated weaponry from their foreign supporters, which include Arab states and Turkey.

A British-based monitoring group, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, has reported scores of civilians killed on both sides, although more in rebel-held territory.

Syrian state television said on Monday that a missile had hit the surroundings of Aleppo University Medical Hospital, and several civilians were injured by rebel mortar attacks on the residential area of Jamiyat Hay al Zahra in western Aleppo.

The rebel-held local council of Aleppo city announced a state of emergency in areas it runs due to the intense bombardment. About 350,000-400,000 people are believed to remain in rebel-held parts of what was once a city of 2 million.

Mohammad Muaz Abu Saleh, a senior councillor in the rebel Aleppo governate council, said residents were not abandoning opposition-held areas, despite the intense bombardment.

“Those who wanted to leave Aleppo have fled,” he said. Those who have stayed behind “have decided to stay under all circumstances of shelling and siege. Aleppo will remain populated with its people not leaving.”

Amar al-Absi, a resident of a rebel-held area, said: “There was heavy shelling throughout the night. In my neighborhood, Salah al-Deen, a missile hit a building that was empty and it was leveled but there were no casualties.”

In the countryside north of Aleppo, other rebel groups have been fighting against Islamic State fighters, who are not party to any ceasefire.

Amaq, a news agency affiliated to Islamic State, said the militants had gained control of the villages of Doudayan, Tel Shaer and Iykda from rival rebels in the northern Aleppo area near the border with Turkey.

They said they were able cut the supply routes of other rebels in the area, despite Turkish artillery shelling to aid the rebels against Islamic State.

The Observatory said the militants had staged a counterattack to regain ground lost from other rebels in to-and-fro fighting that has seen no major gains for any side.

Turkey said it had shelled Islamic State positions across the border and attacked them with drones on Sunday, killing 34 militants in retaliation for cross-border strikes. The death toll could not be confirmed.

Turkey, a NATO ally, is part of a U.S.-led coalition launching air strikes against Islamic State, but is also strongly opposed to the main Kurdish militia in Syria, Washington’s closest ally on the ground. It is one of the leading opponents of Assad and backers of rebels opposed to him.

Another major supporter of the rebels is Saudi Arabia, whose Foreign Minister Jubeir blamed the latest escalation on the government, condemned it as a “violation of all humanitarian laws” and called for Assad to step down.

“He can leave through a political process, which we hope he will do, or he will be removed by force,” Jubeir said alongside Kerry.

(Writing by Peter Graff; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

Syria calls local truces; U.N. condemns monstrous disregard for lives

People inspect the damage at a site hit by airstrikes, in the rebel-held area of Aleppo's Bustan al-Qasr

By Lisa Barrington and Jack Stubbs

MOSCOW/BEIRUT – (Reuters) – Syria declared brief local truces near Damascus and in one province on Friday but made no mention of halting combat on the main battlefield in Aleppo, after a surge in fighting the United Nations said showed “monstrous disregard” for civilian lives.

The new “regime of calm”, to begin from 1:00 a.m. on Saturday, would last just one day in the capital’s eastern Ghouta suburb and three days in the northern countryside of the coastal province of Latakia, the army said in a statement.

Both districts have seen intensified fighting in recent days. The statement made no mention however of the city of Aleppo, scene of the worst violence, which is divided between rebel-held and government areas. An air strike on an Aleppo hospital killed at least 27 people this week.

Russian news agencies quoted an opposition figure saying the new truce would also apply to Aleppo, but there was no separate confirmation of this.

The Syrian military statement gave no details of the meaning of the term “regime of calm”, but Russia’s Interfax news agency quoted the officer in charge of a Russian ceasefire monitoring center as saying it meant all military action would cease.

Damascus described the truces as an attempt to salvage a wider “cessation of hostilities” agreement. That ceasefire has been in place since February to allow peace talks to take place but has all but completely collapsed in recent days along with the Geneva negotiations.

The U.N. human rights chief, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, said violence was “soaring back to the levels we saw prior to the cessation of hostilities”.

“There are deeply disturbing reports of military build-ups indicating preparations for a lethal escalation,” Zeid said. The reports revealed a “monstrous disregard for civilian lives by all parties to the conflict”, he added.

The United Nations has called on Moscow and Washington to help restore the ceasefire to prevent the collapse of peace talks, which broke up this week in Geneva with virtually no progress after the opposition walked out.

“I DREAD THE HORROR”

“The cessation of hostilities and the Geneva talks were the only game in town, and if they are abandoned now, I dread to think how much more horror we will see in Syria,” Zeid said.

Air strikes on rebel-held areas of Aleppo and shelling of government-held areas of the city resumed on Friday after a brief dawn lull.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitoring group, said air strikes and government shelling had killed at least 131 civilians including 21 children in rebel areas in the past week, while rebel shelling of government areas had killed 71 civilians including 13 children.

At least six people died and more were injured and trapped under fallen buildings in air strikes on Friday on rebel-held areas, the Observatory said.

Bebars Mishal, a civil defense chief working in rebel-held areas of Aleppo, told Reuters there were a number of air attacks in the morning, many of them around mosques in rebel-held areas. Mishal said one hit a clinic in Aleppo’s Al-Marja district.

Syrian state television said people had been killed and wounded and a building set on fire during shelling of government-held quarters in Aleppo, which included a hit on a mosque as people were leaving Friday prayers.

The war in Syria has killed more than 250,000 people, with the U.N. envoy giving a toll as high as 400,000.

(Writing by Peter Graff, reporting by Omar Fahmy, editing by Peter Millership)

Air strikes on Aleppo hospital kill 27, U.N. declares catastrophe

A civil defence member carries a child that survived from under the rubble at a site hit by airstrikes in the

By Lisa Barrington and Stephanie Nebehay

BEIRUT/GENEVA (Reuters) – Air strikes destroyed a hospital and killed dozens of people in rebel-held areas of Syria’s Aleppo including children and doctors, and the United Nations called on Moscow and Washington to salvage a “barely-alive” cease-fire.

The city of Aleppo is at the epicenter of a military escalation that has undermined peace talks in Geneva to end the five-year-old war and U.N. envoy Staffan de Mistura appealed to the presidents of the United States and Russia to intervene.

Six days of air strikes and rebel shelling in Aleppo, which is split between government forces and rebels, have killed some 200 people in the city, two-thirds of them on the opposition side, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says.

“The catastrophic deterioration in Aleppo over the last 24-48 hours” has jeopardized the aid lifeline that delivers supplies to millions of Syrians, said Jan Egeland, chairman of the U.N. humanitarian task force. “I could not in any way express how high the stakes are for the next hours and days.”

The Geneva talks aim to end a war that has killed more than 250,000 people, created the world’s worst refugee crisis, allowed for the rise of Islamic State and drawn in regional and major powers but the negotiations have all but failed and a truce to allow them to take place has collapsed.

Winding up the Geneva talks, de Mistura said he aimed to resume them in May, but gave no date.

“Wherever you are, you hear explosions of mortars, shelling and planes flying over,” Valter Gros, who heads the International Committee of the Red Cross Aleppo office, said.

“There is no neighborhood of the city that hasn’t been hit. People are living on the edge. Everyone here fears for their lives and nobody knows what is coming next,” he said.

A Syrian military source said government planes had not been in areas where air raids were reported. Syria’s army denied reports that the Syrian air force targeted the hospital.

The Russian defense ministry, whose air strikes have swung the war in favor of President Bashar al-Assad, could not immediately be reached for comment. Russia has previously denied hitting civilian targets in Syria where it launched air raids late last year to bolster its ally.

The British-based Observatory said 31 people were killed as a result of air strikes on several areas of opposition-held Aleppo on Thursday. In addition, it said at least 27 people were killed in the air strike on the hospital that was struck late on Wednesday. Rescue workers put the toll higher.

In government-held areas, rebel mortar shelling killed at least 14 people, the Observatory and Syria’s state news agency SANA reported.

“WHERE IS THE OUTRAGE?”

The bombed al-Quds hospital was supported by international medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), which said it was destroyed after being hit by a direct air strike that killed at least three doctors.

“This devastating attack has destroyed a vital hospital in Aleppo, and the main referral center for pediatric care in the area,” said Muskilda Zancada, MSF head of mission, Syria. “Where is the outrage among those with the power and obligation to stop this carnage?”

ICRC spokesman Ewan Watson told Reuters in Geneva: “It is unacceptable, any attack on hospitals is a war crime. But it is up to an investigator and it is for a court to take that decision on whether it is a war crime or not.”

Peace talks, which have been deeply divided on the future of Assad, looked to be over last week when the opposition walked out, saying the Syrian government was stalling for time to advance on the ground and calling for implementation of a U.N. resolution requiring full humanitarian access to besieged areas.

De Mistura voiced deep concern at the truce unraveling in Aleppo and at least three other places, but also said he saw some narrowing of positions between the government and opposition visions of political transition.

“Hence my appeal for a U.S.-Russian urgent initiative at the highest level, because the legacy of both President Obama and President Putin is linked to the success of what has been a unique initiative,” de Mistura told a news conference.

They should “be able to revitalize what they have created and which is still alive but barely”.

The United States and Russia must convene a ministerial meeting of major and regional powers who compose the International Syria Support Group (ISSG), he said.

Egeland said: “So the appeal of Staffan de Mistura to the United States, to Russia and to the other powers in the ISSG is ‘you did it once, you can do it again.'”

FUTURE OF ASSAD CRITICAL

Bashar Ja’afari, who led the government delegation, said on Tuesday the round had been “useful and constructive”. But he gave no sign of ceding to the opposition HNC’s central demand for a political transition without Assad. The government has said the future of Assad is non-negotiable.

De Mistura, asked whether Assad’s fate was discussed, replied: “We didn’t get into names of people … but actually how to change the current governance.”

The U.N. envoy said the two sides remained far apart in their vision of a political transition, but shared some “commonalities”, including the view “that the transitional governance could include members of the present government and the opposition, independents and others”.

Giving a chilling statistic about the backdrop of violence against which the talks played out, de Mistura said that in the past 48 hours there had been an average of one Syrian civilian killed every 25 minutes and one wounded every 13 minutes.

Hossam Abu Ghayth, 29, a documentary film-maker living in the rebel-held area of Kalasa in Aleppo which was bombed on Thursday, said by WhatsApp: “There are still planes (flying) … They’re hitting everything, mosques, markets, residential buildings, field hospitals.

“Dozens of people are under the rubble and the Civil Defence cannot dig out the bodies because of the intensity” of the bombardments.

Tony Ishak, 26, a resident of the government-held area of Suleimaniya in Aleppo and a politics student, said via WhatsApp:

“It’s been really bad for around four days now, the situation is worse than bad. Shells are falling like rain everywhere. The hospitals are full.”

(Writing by Peter Millership. Reporting by Lisa Barrington, Tom Perry, Suleiman al-Khalidi, John Davison, Stephanie Nebehay and Shadia Nasralla)

Aleppo Death toll mounts; rescue workers killed

Residents and civil defence members inspect a damaged building after an airstrike on the rebel-held Tariq al-Bab neighbourhood of Aleppo

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Attacks by government forces and rebels killed at least 30 people, including eight children, in the last 24 hours in Aleppo, a city seeing some of the worst of a renewed escalation in the Syrian war, a monitoring group said.

Intensified fighting has all but destroyed a partial ceasefire that started at the end of February, with U.N.-led peace talks in disarray.

In Aleppo, divided between areas controlled by the government and by rebels, 19 people were killed by rebel shelling and 11 were killed by government air strikes, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

That adds to another 60 people killed over the weekend in Aleppo, Syria’s largest city before the war, according to the Observatory. Air strikes were also reported in rebel-held areas near Damascus and in Hama province on Tuesday.

In a separate incident west of Aleppo, five Civil Defence workers – first responders in opposition-held territory where medical infrastructure has all but broken down – were killed by air strikes and a rocket attack on their centre.

The Observatory and Civil Defence colleagues said the attack appeared to have deliberately targeted the rescue workers in the town of Atareb, some 25 km (15 miles) west of Aleppo.

“The targeting was very precise,” Radi Saad, a Civil Defence worker, told Reuters.

“They were in the centre and ready to respond. When they heard warplanes in the area they did not think they would be the target.” Two people were seriously wounded and ambulances and cars belonging to doctors were destroyed, another Civil Defence member, Ahmad Sheikho, said.

It was unclear whether Syrian or Russian warplanes had launched the raids. There was no immediate comment from the Syrian government.

Each side accuses the other of targeting civilian areas in the five-year-old war that has killed more than 250,000 people.

A Syrian military source said the army would “respond firmly” against rebels attacking government-held parts of Aleppo. State news agency SANA said what it called terrorist groups, including the al Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front, had shelled those neighborhoods.

In the north of Aleppo, insurgents resumed bombardment of a Kurdish-controlled neighborhood, Sheikh Maqsoud, according to the Kurdish YPG militia.

“Civilian areas were shelled at random,” the YPG said.

The YPG and its allies have been battling rebels, including groups backed via Turkey by states opposed to President Bashar al-Assad, for several months near Aleppo and close to the Turkish border.

Rebels accuse the YPG of collaborating with the government in trying to stop people using the only road into opposition-held Aleppo, something the YPG denies.

Turkey sees the YPG as a terrorist group and is concerned at moves by Kurdish forces to expand their control along the Syrian-Turkish border, where they already hold an uninterrupted 400 km (250 mile) stretch.

(Reporting by John Davison; additional reporting by Tom Perry and Marwan Makdesi in Damascus; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

Water service restored to 2 million Syrians after 48-day shutdown

Millions of people living in and around the Syrian city of Aleppo were without a source of clean water for 48 days before a key facility came back online last week, UNICEF announced Sunday.

The al-Khafseh treatment plant resumed taking and treating water from the Euphrates River last Thursday, the United Nations children’s organization said in a news release, marking the first time the plant had done so since it was “deliberately” closed on January 16.

UNICEF did not assign blame for the roughly month-and-a-half shutdown, which left about 2 million people in or near Aleppo without their only means of accessing clean drinking water.

Rather, the organization noted the incident was the latest in a line of troubling attacks on water supplies across Syria, saying “all sides” involved in the nearly five-year conflict have used water as “a weapon of war” to deprive civilians of the clean water that is necessary for everyday life.

UNICEF said about 5 million people in Syria faced water shortages that could have killed them last year, as various combatants either shut off water, targeted facilities with airstrikes or ground attacks or prevented civilians from doing the work required to repair and operate the systems.

The organization said civilians sometimes turned to untreated water sources, which left them prone to contracting waterborne illnesses. That was the case in Aleppo, where people were forced to rely on groundwater. About half of them were children, who were particularly at risk.

However, this wasn’t the first time that Aleppo’s water supply — or the plant — was offline.

According to UNICEF, about 2 million people were temporarily without water after an airstrike hit the plant last November. That came months after a summer that saw “opposition groups” turn off the water more than 40 times, affecting 1.5 million people. One outage lasted two weeks.

Damascus, Dar’a and Salamiyah have also seen disruptions in their water service, UNICEF said.

In a statement, UNICEF Representative in Syria Hanaa Singer said the al-Khafseh development was “lifesaving” and called for more to be done to ensure Syrians can always access safe water.

“Parties to the conflict must stop attacking or deliberately interrupting water supply, which is indispensable for the survival of the population. They should protect the treatment, distribution systems, pipelines and personnel who repair water installations,” Singer said. “Syria’s children and their families have a right to safe drinking water and clean water for hygiene and health.”

United Nations agencies say more than 250,000 people have been killed since the Syrian conflict began in 2011. Another 12 million are displaced, 4.8 million of whom are refugees.

Islamic State tightens grip on Syrian government road to Aleppo

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Islamic State fighters were reported to have tightened their grip on a Syrian government supply route to Aleppo on Tuesday as the army battled to retake the road, which is important to its campaign to retake the city.

As Damascus accepted a U.S.-Russian plan for a “cessation of hostilities” between the government and rebels due to take effect on Saturday, heavy Russian air strikes were also said to be targeting one of the last roads into opposition-held parts of Aleppo.

The plan announced by the United States and Russia on Monday is the result of intensive diplomacy to end the five-year-long war. But rebels say the exclusion of Islamic State and the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front will give the government a pretext to keep attacking them because its fighters are widely spread in opposition-held areas.

The Syrian government, backed by Russian air strikes since September, said it would coordinate with Russia to define which groups and areas would be included in what it called a “halt to combat operations”. Damascus also warned that continued foreign support for the rebels could wreck the agreement.

The Russian intervention has turned the momentum President Bashar al-Assad’s way in a conflict that has splintered Syria and mostly reduced his control to the big cities of the west and the coast.

Damascus, backed by ground forces including Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Iranian Revolutionary Guards, is making significant advances, including near the city of Aleppo which is split between rebel- and government-control.

The Islamic State assault has targeted a desert road which the government has been forced to use to reach Aleppo because insurgents still control the main highway further west.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which reports the war using a network of sources on the ground, said the road remained cut for a second day. A Syrian military source told Reuters army operations were continuing to repel the attack.

Observatory Director Rami Abdulrahman told Reuters: “The clashes are ongoing, the regime recovered four of seven (lost positions). It is still cut.” It later reported IS had seized control of the village of Khanaser on the road.

Islamic State, which controls swathes of eastern and central Syria, differs from rebels fighting Assad in western Syria because its priority is expanding its own “caliphate” rather than reforming Syria through Assad’s removal from power.

The group has escalated attacks on government targets in recent days. On Sunday, it staged some of the deadliest suicide bomb attacks of the war, killing around 150 people in government-controlled Damascus and Homs.

A U.S.-Russian statement said the two countries and others would work together to delineate the territory held by IS, Nusra Front, and other militant groups excluded from the truce.

In Geneva, U.N. spokesman Ahmad Fawzi said: “This is a cessation of hostilities that we hope will take force very quickly and hope provide breathing space for intra-Syrian talks to resume.”

RIGHT TO RESPOND

Damascus stressed the importance of sealing the borders and halting foreign support for armed groups and “preventing these organizations from strengthening their capabilities or changing their positions, in order to avoid what may lead to wrecking this agreement”.

The Syrian military reserved the right to “respond to any breach by these groups against Syrian citizens or against its armed forces”, a government statement added.

The main, Saudi-backed Syrian opposition body said late on Monday it “consented to” the international efforts, but said acceptance of a truce was conditional on an end to blockades of rebel-held areas, free access for humanitarian aid, a release of detainees, and a halt to air strikes against civilians.

The opposition High Negotiations Committee also said it did not expect Assad, Russia, or Iran to cease hostilities.

The powerful Kurdish YPG militia, which is currently fighting both Islamic State and rebels near Aleppo, is “seriously examining” the U.S.-Russian plan to decide whether to take part, a YPG official told Reuters. “There is so far no decision,” said the official, declining to be identified because he is not an official YPG spokesman.

The YPG, an ally of the United States in the fight against Islamic State in Syria, has recently received Russian air support during an offensive against rebels near Aleppo.

Britain said on Tuesday it had seen disturbing evidence that Syrian Kurdish forces were coordinating with the Syrian government and the Russian air force.

Turkey, a major sponsor of the insurgency against Assad, said it welcomed plans for the halt to fighting but was not optimistic about a positive outcome to talks on a political transition.

Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus said Ankara had reservations about actions that Russian forces could take against Syria’s moderate opposition and civilians. Turkey is worried about the expansion of YPG influence in Syria, fearing it could fuel separatism among its own Kurdish population.

A rebel fighter in the Aleppo area said he did not expect the ceasefire plan to work.

“The Russian jets will not stop bombing on the pretext of Nusra and the Islamic State organization, and will keep bombing civilians and the rest of the factions with this pretext,” said Abu al-Baraa al-Hamawi, a fighter with the Ajnad al-Sham group.

“Everything that is happening is pressure to extend the life of the regime,” he told Reuters from the Aleppo area.

(Additional reporting by Kinda Makieh in Damascus, Orhan Coskun in Ankara, Guy Faulconbridge in London and Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; Writing by Tom Perry; Editing by Giles Elgood)

U.N. fears for hundreds of thousands if Syria troops encircle Aleppo

GENEVA/DAMASCUS/ONCUPINAR, Turkey (Reuters) – Hundreds of thousands of civilians could be cut off from food if Syrian government forces encircle rebel-held parts of Aleppo, the United Nations said on Tuesday, warning of a new exodus of refugees fleeing a Russian-backed assault.

The army aims to secure the border with Turkey and recover control of Aleppo, a senior adviser to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad told Reuters, adding that she did not expect diplomacy to succeed while foreign states maintain support for insurgents.

Syrian government forces, backed by Russian air strikes and Iranian and Lebanese Hezbollah fighters, have launched a major offensive in the countryside around Aleppo, which has been divided between government and rebel control for years.

It marks one of the most important shifts of momentum in the five-year civil war that has killed 250,000 people and already driven 11 million from their homes.

Since last week, fighting has already wrecked the first attempt at peace talks for two years and led rebel fighters to speak about losing their northern power base altogether.

The U.N. is worried the government advance could cut off the last link for civilians in rebel-held parts of Aleppo with the main Turkish border crossing, which has long served as the lifeline for insurgent-controlled territory.

“It would leave up to 300,000 people, still residing in the city, cut off from humanitarian aid unless cross-line access could be negotiated,” the United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said.

If government advances around the city continue, it said, “local councils in the city estimate that some 100,000 – 150,000 civilians may flee”. Aleppo was once Syria’s biggest city, home to 2 million people.

Air strikes continued on Tal Rifaat, Anadan and other towns in the Aleppo countryside, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the war, and activists said, adding that they were almost certainly from Russian planes.

Independent Doctors’ Association official Mahmoud Mustafa said at least two people had been killed and 30 wounded in air strikes near Tal Rifaat and villages near Azaz. The death toll could be higher since his figures referred only to victims brought to the organization’s hospital on the Syrian side of the Oncupinar border crossing with Turkey.

In a residential area of Damascus, a suicide bomber drove his car into a police officers’ club on Tuesday, blowing himself up, a Syrian interior ministry statement said. The state news agency SANA reported three dead and 14 wounded.

The Observatory said eight police officers had been killed and 20 wounded in the blast. Islamic State claimed responsibility.

While mortar and missile attacks have been a common feature of life in Damascus, this was the first bombing of its kind in many months in the center of the capital.

Last month, at least 60 people were killed, including 25 Shi’ite fighters, on the outskirts of the city by a car bomb and two suicide bombers near Syria’s holiest Shi’ite shrine, the Observatory reported. Islamic State also claimed that attack.

“BETWEEN TWO EVILS”

Turkey, already home to 2.5 million Syrians, the world’s biggest refugee population, has so far kept its frontier mostly closed to the latest wave of displaced.

Trucks ferrying aid and building supplies were crossing the border at Oncupinar into Syria on Tuesday, while a few ambulances entered Turkey, sirens blazing.

But the crossing remained closed to the tens of thousands of refugees sheltering in camps on the Syrian side of the border.

“We Syrians will be stuck between two evils if Turkey does not open the doors,” said Khaled, 30, trying to return to Aleppo to rescue his wife and children. “We will have to choose between Russian bombardment or Daesh,” he said, using a pejorative Arabic acronym for Islamic State.

The U.N. urged Ankara on Tuesday to open the border and has called on other countries to assist Turkey with aid.

Assad adviser Bouthaina Shaaban, speaking at her office in Damascus, said the government’s aim was also “to control our borders with Turkey because Turkey is the main source of terrorists, and the main crossing for them”. The Syrian government describes all the groups fighting it as terrorists.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said as many as a million refugees could arrive if the Russian-Syrian campaign continues. Fifty thousand people had reached Turkey’s borders in the latest wave and Ankara was admitting people in a “controlled fashion”, he said.

The U.N. World Food Programme said in a statement it had begun food distribution in the Syrian town of Azaz near the Turkish border for the new wave of displaced people.

“The situation is quite volatile and fluid in northern Aleppo with families on the move seeking safety,” said Jakob Kern, WFP’s country director in Syria.

“We are extremely concerned as access and supply routes from the north to eastern Aleppo city and surrounding areas are now cut off, but we are making every effort to get enough food in place for all those in need, bringing it in through the remaining open border crossing point from Turkey.”

LITTLE HOPE FOR PEACE TALKS

The Russian-backed government assault around Aleppo, as well as advances further south, helped torpedo the first peace talks for nearly two years.

International powers are due to meet on Thursday in Munich in a bid to resurrect the talks, but diplomats hold out virtually no hope for negotiations as long as the offensive continues. Rebels say they will not attend without a halt to the bombing.

Moscow turned the momentum in the war in favor of its ally Assad when it joined the conflict four months ago with a campaign of air strikes against his enemies, many of whom are supported by Arab states, Turkey and the West.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry urged Russia on Tuesday to join efforts to bring about a ceasefire. “Russia’s activities from Aleppo and in the region are making it much more difficult to be able to come to the table and be able to have a serious conversation,” Kerry told reporters.

The Syrian president’s adviser said talk of a ceasefire was coming from states that “do not want an end to terrorism” and were instead seeking to shore up insurgents, who are losing territory on a number of important frontlines.

(Additional reporting by Suleiman al-Khalidi in Beirut, Tom Miles in Geneva, Gergely Szakacs and Marton Dunai in Budapest and Maria Tsvetkova in Moscow; writing by Peter Graff; editing by Giles Elgood, Philippa Fletcher and David Stamp)

Thousands flee as Russian-backed offensive threatens to besiege Aleppo

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Tens of thousands of Syrians fled an intensifying Russian assault around Aleppo on Friday, and aid workers said they feared the major city could soon fall under a full government siege.

Iran reported one of its generals had been killed on the front line, giving direct confirmation of the role Tehran is playing along with Moscow in what appears to be one of the most determined offensives in five years of civil war.

The government assault around Aleppo, and advances in the south and northwest, helped to torpedo Geneva peace talks this week. Russia’s intervention has tipped the war President Bashar al-Assad’s way, reversing gains rebels made last year.

The last two days saw government troops and their Lebanese and Iranian allies fully encircle the countryside north of Aleppo and cut off the main supply route linking the city – Syria’s largest before the war – to Turkey. Ankara said it suspected the aim was to starve the population into submission.

Aleppo would be the biggest strategic prize in years for Assad’s government in a conflict that has killed at least 250,000 people and driven 11 million from their homes.

Video footage showed thousands of people massing at the Bab al-Salam crossing on the Turkish border. Men carried luggage on their heads, and the elderly and those unable to walk were brought in wheelchairs. Women sat on the side of the road holding babies and waiting to be allowed into Turkey.

Rights group Amnesty International urged Turkey to let in those fleeing the latest violence, after reports the border remained closed.

“It feels like a siege of Aleppo is about to begin,” said David Evans, Middle East program director for the U.S. aid agency Mercy Corps, which said the most direct humanitarian route to Aleppo had been severed.

“The situation in Aleppo is a humanitarian catastrophe,” said an opposition spokesman still in Geneva after the ill-fated peace talks. “The international community must take urgent, concrete steps to address it.”

NON-STOP RUSSIAN AIR STRIKES

“The Russian (air) cover continues night and day, there were more than 250 air strikes on this area in one day,” Hassan Haj Ali, head of Liwa Suqour al-Jabal, a rebel group fighting in northwest Syria, told Reuters.

“The regime is now trying to expand the area it has taken control of,” he added. “Now the northern countryside (of Aleppo) is totally encircled, and the humanitarian situation is very difficult.”

Syrian state TV and a monitoring group said the army and its allies had seized the town of Ratyan north of Aleppo. Haj Ali said the town had not yet fallen, but that there were “very heavy battles”.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said some 120 fighters on all sides had been killed around Ratyan.

Hezbollah’s Al Manar TV and Syrian state TV later on Friday said forces had taken another nearby town, Mayer.

The Syrian army and its allies broke a years-long rebel blockade of two Shi’ite towns in Aleppo province on Wednesday, cutting off a major supply line from Turkey to Aleppo.

Aleppo, Syria’s commercial hub, has been divided for years between a section under government control and areas in the grip of rebels. Much of the UNESCO heritage old city is in ruins.

Any government siege would target the rebel-held parts, where more than 350,000 people live. Well over a million live in the areas under government control.

Haj Ali said most of the fighters on the government side were “Iranian and from Hezbollah, or Afghan”.

A non-Syrian senior security source close to Damascus told Reuters on Thursday that Qassem Soleimani, commander of foreign operations of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps, was overseeing operations in the Aleppo area.

Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency said Revolutionary Guard Corps Brigadier-General Mohsen Ghajarian had been killed in Aleppo province, as had six Iranian volunteer militiamen.

The five-year-old civil war pits the government led by Assad, a member of the Alawite sect derived from Shi’ite Islam, against a range of insurgents who are mainly Sunni Muslims, backed by Saudi Arabia, other Arab states and Turkey. Western countries have lined up in opposition to Assad.

Since 2014, the Sunni jihadist group Islamic State has run a self-proclaimed caliphate in eastern Syria and Iraq, under air assault from a U.S.-led coalition. Russia launched its own separate air campaign four months ago to aid its ally Assad, transforming the battlefield.

But swathes of the country are still in the hands of armed rebels, including Islamic State in the east, Kurdish militia in the north, and a mosaic of groups in the west who have been the target of many of the Russian air strikes.

ARMY GAINS IN DERAA

Syria’s government forces and allies have made further gains in the southern province of Deraa, recapturing a town just outside Deraa city.

It has been backed by some of the heaviest Russian air strikes since it began its bombing campaign in September, a rebel spokesman in the area said.

The talks convened this week in Geneva were the first diplomatic attempt to end the war in two years but collapsed before they began in earnest. The opposition refused to negotiate while Russia was escalating its bombing and government troops were advancing.

NATO said Moscow’s intensified bombing campaign undermined the peace efforts and warned Russia was creating tensions by violating the airspace of Syria’s neighbor Turkey, a NATO member which shot down a Russian warplane in November.

Russia has accused Turkey of preparing a military incursion into northern Syria. Ankara dismissed this as propaganda intended to conceal Russia’s own “crimes”. Aleppo was threatened with a “siege of starvation”, and Turkey had the right to take any measures to protect its security, it said.

Moscow says its targets in Syria are restricted to Islamic State and al Qaeda’s Syrian branch, the Nusra Front, both of which were excluded from peace talks and unacceptable to the countries supporting the insurgents against Assad.

“Why did the opposition that left Geneva complain about the offensive in Aleppo, which is actually targeted against Jabhat al-Nusra (Nusra Front) and other radical extremist groups?” said Russia’s ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, Alexey Borodavkin.

That position is rejected by Western and Arab countries, which say most Russian strikes are against other opponents of Assad, not the banned groups.

Nusra Front said in a statement on Friday it had killed 25 Iranian fighters and Shi’ite militiamen in fighting in Aleppo.

“The intense Russia air strikes, mainly targeting opposition groups in Syria, is undermining the efforts to find a political solution to the conflict,” said NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg.

Russian violations of Turkish airspace were “causing increased tensions and … create risks”.

Saudi Arabia said it was ready to participate in separate U.S. ground operations against Islamic State. The United States welcomed the Saudi offer, although Washington so far has committed only to small scale operations by special forces units on the ground in Syria.

(Additional reporting by Suleiman Al-Khalidi in Amman, Humeyra Pamuk in Istanbul, Parisa Hafezi in Ankara and Tom Miles in Geneva; writing by John Davison and Peter Graff; editing by Andrew Roche)