Tag Archives: Syria

Islamic State’s de facto ‘minister of war’ possibly killed, U.S. officials say

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A red-bearded Islamic State commander described by American officials as the group’s de facto minister of war may have been killed in an air strike in Syria on Friday by the U.S.-led coalition, several U.S. officials said on Tuesday.

Abu Omar al-Shishani, also known as Omar the Chechen, ranked among the most wanted militants under a U.S. reward program that offered up to $5 million for information to help remove him from the battlefield.

Born in 1986 in Georgia, which was then still part of the Soviet Union, Shishani had a reputation as a close military adviser to Islamic State’s leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who was said by followers to have relied heavily on Shishani.

He may have been killed during a coalition strike on March 4 near the town of al-Shadadi, which U.S.-backed forces from the Syrian Arab Coalition captured from the Islamic State last month.

Two U.S. officials expressed optimism about the strike but acknowledged that a determination about Shishani’s fate was not certain and that the results of the operation still were being reviewed. A third official limited himself to saying Shishani was targeted in the strike.

The U.S. State Department described Shishani as a senior Islamic State commander and Shura Council member based in al-Raqqa, the Islamic State’s de facto capital in Syria.

It said he was identified as the Islamic State’s military commander in a video distributed by the group in 2014.

Shishani, whose name was originally Tarkhan Tayumurazovich Batirashvili, oversaw a prison facility near Raqqa where Islamic State possibly held foreign hostages.

(Additional reporting by Jonathan Landay; Editing by Bill Trott)

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.

Air strike hits Syrian market, opposition says truce must be respected

BEIRUT/GENEVA (Reuters) – A Syrian or Russian air strike was reported to have killed at least a dozen people and possibly many more at a market in northwestern Syria on Monday, straining a cessation of hostilities agreement meant to pave the way for peace talks.

In a further upsurge in violence, al Qaeda’s Nusra Front and other Islamist insurgents not included in the U.S.-Russian agreement attacked government forces in a neighboring province, a monitoring group said.

The agreement, accepted by President Bashar al-Assad’s government and most of his enemies, has reduced violence in Syria since it took effect on Feb 27, the first truce of its kind in a 5-year-old war that has killed more than 250,000 people and caused the world’s worst refugee crisis.

Foreign powers hope the pause in fighting can lead to peace talks to end the conflict. But the agreement, which has not been directly signed by the Syrian warring parties and is less binding than a formal ceasefire, is very fragile and each side has accused the other of breaking it.

Damascus and Moscow have vowed to continue fighting groups outside the agreement such as Islamic State and the Nusra Front, which is widely deployed across western Syria in close proximity to groups that agreed to cease fire. Many rebels say they believe the government and its Russian allies can use the presence of the militants as an excuse to fight on.

The death toll from the air strike on a market selling diesel in rebel-held Idlib province was likely to rise, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said, adding that it did not know whether the Syrian government or its Russian ally was responsible.

Riad Hijab, chairman of the opposition High Negotiations Committee (HNC), said “tens” of people had been killed in what he described as a massacre. There was no word from the Syrian government, which has said it is respecting the agreement.

Hijab said the opposition would decide by the end of the week whether to attend the talks, which the United Nations aims to start this week. Another HNC member told Reuters it was leaning toward going.

The Nusra Front and the Islamist Jund al-Aqsa attacked government forces near the village of al-Ais in the southern Aleppo countryside on Monday and gained some ground in subsequent clashes, the Britain-based Observatory said.

The agreement has been followed by more aid deliveries to opposition-held areas blockaded by the government, though the opposition says the quantities fall far short of the needs.

DISPUTED MAP

Rebels have said government forces, their war effort buoyed by five months of Russian air strikes, appear to be mobilizing forces. Opposition fighters say there have been numerous government attacks on their positions during the cessation, notably in northwestern Syria near the border with Turkey.

Russia has meanwhile said weapons are being supplied daily to rebels from Turkey, a major foreign sponsor of the rebellion.

Russia’s Defence Ministry said on Monday eight ceasefire violations had been registered in Syria over the past 24 hours.

The Syrian army has said very little about operations in western areas of Syria covered by the agreement, though it has said operations against Nusra continue.

The town struck in Monday’s air strike is close to an air base which Nusra Front and other groups captured last September. Government forces also shelled the rebel-held town of Jisr al-Shughour in Idlib province, the Observatory said.

Hijab, speaking in a conference call with reporters, said he had sent a letter to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to complain about a map of armed groups’ positions, which was published by the Russian Defence Ministry. He said the map was not accurate.

In a separate incident, the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia said the death toll from insurgent attacks on a mainly YPG-controlled residential quarter of northern city Aleppo on Sunday had risen to 16, including nine children.

The Observatory said it was the biggest single toll since the agreement came into effect.

The YPG said later on Monday insurgents from the Failaq al-Sham Islamist group had “infiltrated” near a village near the YPG-controlled city of Afrin in northwestern Aleppo province and fired at residents.

The YPG, which works with the United States but is considered hostile by U.S. ally Turkey, has for months been battling insurgents that receive support through Turkey in Aleppo city and in the north of the province.

GOVERNING AUTHORITY

Western states have said the cessation of hostilities appears to be largely holding, hoping that will allow for peace talks to get underway. A previous attempt to convene talks was aborted in February before any face-to-face meetings took place.

The obstacles to talks remain formidable, including differences over the future of Assad. The opposition wants Assad removed from power at the start of a transitional period, a demand Western countries have backed away from as Russia’s military intervention has reshaped the war in his favor.

HNC member Riad Nassan Agha said a final decision on attending the Geneva talks would depend on issues including the degree of compliance with the truce and progress toward easing humanitarian conditions.

But noting what he described as a reduction in ceasefire violations by the government side in the last two days, Agha said “our inclination is to go” and said he expected opposition delegates to start arriving on Friday.

He added that truce violations must be reduced to “zero” and that nothing else must happen to obstruct the start of talks.

“We will go, God willing,” he said.

The agenda must focus on the “formation of a transitional governing authority” in line with a U.N. Security Council resolution, he said, adding: “We will not accept getting into issues outside what the resolution sets out”.

(Additional reporting by John Davision; Editing by Dominic Evans, Philippa Fletcher and Peter Graff)

Spanish officials seize 20K military uniforms from alleged ISIS suppliers

Police in Spain have neutralized a “very active and effective business network” that allegedly supplied a variety of materials to terrorist groups, the country’s interior ministry said Thursday.

A counterterrorism investigation last month led to the arrest of seven people who are accused of providing “logistical and financial support” to the Islamic State and the Syrian al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra, the ministry announced in a news release. Authorities also confiscated about 20,000 uniforms and other accessories that could have been used “to equip an army that would be perfectly prepared for combat” out of three shipping containers in Valencia and Algeciras.

The ministry said the containers were tied to the business network, and had been labeled as carrying “second-hand clothes” so as not to arouse suspicion from customs officials. However, authorities discovered bundles of uniforms hidden among other clothing inside the containers.

The now-neutralized network helped provide a constant supply of weapons, military equipment and other technological supplies to areas controlled by the Islamic State, the ministry said.

Syria opposition says government mobilizes, casts doubt on talks

BEIRUT/PARIS/LONDON (Reuters) – The Syrian opposition said on Friday the government was mobilizing forces on many fronts despite an agreement to cease hostilities, and cast doubt on whether peace talks planned for next week would take place.

As rockets fired by government forces were reported to hit near the rebel-held town of Jisr al-Shughour in Idlib province, an influential rebel group said there could be no ceasefire while attacks continue.

An unprecedented U.S.-Russian agreement that came into effect on Saturday has slowed the pace of the 5-year-old war, but rebels fighting President Bashar al-Assad say the government has kept up attacks on strategically important frontlines.

The opposition has yet to say whether it will attend peace talks planned for March 9. Opposition coordinator Riad Hijab said the conditions for talks were “not favorable” but it was too early to say whether they would happen or not.

Assad, his war effort buoyed by five months of Russian air strikes, has said the army is respecting the agreement. The truce does not cover the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front or Islamic State, two groups which Moscow and Damascus have said they will continue to fight.

The Nusra Front is widely deployed across western Syria in close proximity to groups that agreed to cease fire, many of which say they believe the government and its Russian allies can use the presence of the militants as an excuse to fight on. Syrian state media have said very little about operations in western Syria since Saturday.

The Syrian opposition appears at odds with its Western backers over the success of the truce so far.

European leaders told Russian President Vladimir Putin they welcomed the fact the fragile truce appeared to be holding, and it should be used to try to secure peace without Assad.

But Hijab said government forces had attacked more than 50 opposition-held areas where groups that approved the truce were based.

Mohamad Alloush, a senior official in one of the largest rebel groups, Jaish al-Islam, told Reuters the government was mobilizing forces to “occupy very important strategic areas”. His group, in a separate statement, said the war had not stopped as far as it was concerned, and that a ceasefire was not possible while “militias and states kill our people”.

The head of another rebel group, who asked not to be identified for security reasons, said 40 army vehicles loaded with weaponry were seen heading northwards on Thursday night.

Government operations were “focused on Homs, on the coast mostly”, while Aleppo – the target of a major government offensive a month ago – was relatively calm, he said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based organization that tracks the conflict, said heavy shelling and rocket fire landed around the town of Ghasaniya near rebel-held Jisr al-Shughour on Friday.

It also said warplanes on Friday mounted the first air strike against the rebel-held town of Douma near Damascus since the start of the cessation. It did not say whether the planes were Russian or belonged to the Syrian army.

“THE WAR HAS NOT STOPPED”

The U.S. and Russian sponsored cessation of hostilities agreement, which has not been signed directly by the Syrian warring parties and is less binding than a formal ceasefire, is the first of its kind during a conflict that has killed more than 250,000 people.

U.N. Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura said on Thursday the agreement was holding but remained fragile and incidents had been contained. The U.S. State Department said on Thursday there had been no significant violations in the preceding 24 hours.

Assad said earlier this week that the militants had breached the deal from the first day and the army was refraining from responding to give the deal a chance.

Much of southern Syria, including areas near the border with Jordan, has been calm, though a rebel spokesman said government forces were also mobilizing there. “If the truce ends, the regime is ready to attack in a number of areas,” said Abu Ghiath al-Shami of the Alwiyat Seif al-Sham group.

The government, backed by Russian air power and fighters from Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, made significant territorial gains against rebels since the new year, focused in areas of western Syria near the borders with Turkey and Jordan.

De Mistura attempted to hold peace talks a month ago but these failed before they had even started in earnest.

France, Britain and Germany called on the opposition to attend the talks, but warned that the negotiations would succeed only if humanitarian access were granted and the truce respected.

“If these two conditions are not met, then the negotiation process is bound to fail, which we do not want,” French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault told journalists in Paris.

RUSSIA SAYS COMMITTED TO CEASEFIRE

The opposition council, known as the High Negotiations Committee, has said humanitarian demands previously listed as conditions for peace talks have still not been met. These include free access for humanitarian aid to opposition-held areas blockaded by government forces and a release of detainees.

Alloush, the senior Jaish al-Islam official, told Reuters aid delivered in recent days to opposition-held areas “is not enough to meet 10 percent of the needs, and nothing has entered most of the areas”.

In a conference call between the leaders of Germany, France, Britain, Italy and Russia, Putin confirmed Russia’s commitment to the ceasefire, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said.

Western countries want Assad to leave power, and the main opposition council says he should leave before any political transition starts. Russia has stood by him, while saying only Syrians should decide his fate.

In an interview with France 24, U.N. envoy de Mistura also said it was up to Syrians to decide: “Why should we be saying in advance what should the Syrians say, as long as they have the freedom and the opportunity of saying so?”

A spokeswoman for British Prime Minister David Cameron said the European leaders told Putin the truce must be used to try to secure peace without Assad, but their main point on the phone call was to welcome the fact the truce appeared to be holding.

The Kremlin said the leaders agreed that the cessation of hostilities had started yielding its first positive results.

“The importance of continued uncompromising fight against Islamic State, the Nusra Front and other terrorist groups” was stressed during the conversation, it said.

Hijab reiterated opposition complaints that the United States had made many concessions to Russia, including on the cessation of hostilities agreement.

“This is unfortunately at the expense of the Syrian revolution,” he said.

(Additional reporting by Mariam Karouny in Beirut, Maria Sheahan, Thierry Chiarello, John Irish and Andrew Callus in Paris, Elizabeth Piper in London, and Lidia Kelly in Moscow; writing by Tom Perry; editing by Peter Graff)

Electricity supply gradually returns in Syria after massive outage

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Syria’s electricity supply was gradually returning after it was cut across the country on Thursday and Internet connections were briefly disrupted, state media said.

SANA news agency quoted the electricity minister saying that the network was returning and would be restored to its earlier capacity by midnight. It did not say what caused the cut.

It said earlier that the “electricity work has been cut in all governorates. Attempts to find the cause of the outage have begun.”

A Reuters witness confirmed that electricity had gone down in Damascus, and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the five-year-old conflict in Syria, said that power had been cut in the “vast majority of governorates”.

SANA reported the Syria Telecommunications Company as saying Internet services were partially halted on Thursday “as a result of sudden damage to one of the network hubs”, but were later restored.

(Reporting by Lisa Barrington/Mariam Karouny; Editing by Dominic Evans)

White House hesitant to call Islamic State’s actions genocide

The White House does not believe the Islamic State’s actions against Christians in the Middle East have risen to the level of genocide, a spokesman told reporters in Washington this week.

Speaking at a press briefing on Monday, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said the administration was “concerned by the way that ISIL attempts to target religious minorities” — including Christians — in Iraq and Syria. But when a reporter asked the spokesman if the White House was prepared to call the situation genocide, he declined to give the acts that distinction.

“My understanding is, the use of that word involves a very specific legal determination that has at this point not been reached,” Earnest told reporters, according to a transcript published on the White House website. “But we have been quite candid and direct about how ISIL’s tactics are worthy of the kind of international, robust response that the international community is leading. And those tactics include a willingness to target religious minorities, including Christians.”

ISIL is an acronym for the Islamic State, which controls large swaths of land in Iraq and Syria and has been accused of widespread atrocities and human rights abuses in those areas.

The European Parliament and Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe have recently adopted resolutions that accuse the organization’s operatives of committing genocide, which is outlawed under a 1948 United Nations treaty that defines the crime as certain acts “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.”

Those actions include murdering or inflicting serious harm upon a group’s members.

According to ADF International, there are now 1.8 million fewer Christians living in Iraq and Syria than there were a few years ago. The religious freedom advocacy group places the current population at 775,000, down from 2.65 million, and says Yazidis have nearly been wiped out.

The European Parliament’s resolution, adopted last month, accuses the Islamic State of “committing genocide against Christians and Yazidis, and other religious and ethnic minorities, who do not agree with” the group’s radical interpretation of Islam. It states the Islamic State has slaughtered, beaten, extorted, enslaved and forcibly converted many minorities, and its operatives have also vandalized cemeteries, monuments, churches and other places of worship.

The resolution called for the United Nations Security Council to refer the matter to the International Criminal Court, which would formally investigate the genocide allegations. The court would also prosecute and try the accused, and impose punishments upon a guilty verdict.

ADF International has issued a similar call for action.

The United States has also been asked to characterize the Islamic State’s actions as genocide.
The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, an independent commission that makes recommendations to politicians, in December asked the government to designate Christians and four other groups as victims of Islamic State genocide in Iraq and Syria. So far, though, the White House has yet to place the label on the Middle East situation.

“In that region of the world, Christians are a religious minority, and we certainly have been concerned,” Earnest said during the press briefing on Monday. “That’s one of the many reasons we’re concerned with ISIL and their tactics, which is that it’s an affront to our values as a country to see people attacked, singled out or slaughtered based on their religious beliefs.”

The Omnibus spending bill approved by Congress in mid-December includes a provision that says the Secretary of State, John Kerry, must submit an evaluation on the Islamic State’s attacks on Christians and other people of faith in the Middle East to lawmakers within 90 days. That evaluation must include if the situation “constitutes mass atrocities or genocide,” the bill states.

The deadline for that report falls in mid-March.

Syria truce offers glimpses of normality

AMMAN (Reuters) – In the devastated Syrian city of Aleppo, children are outside playing and many people are going to the shops safely for the first time in months thanks to a partial halt to the war that is providing relief even if most doubt that peace will take hold.

“Look at the markets. Where were all these people hiding?” said a bewildered Mahmoud Ashrafi, speaking to Reuters by telephone after picking through opposition-held areas of Aleppo wrecked by barrel bombs and air strikes.

While the “cessation of hostilities” has fallen short of halting the five-year-long war across the country, parts of Syria have enjoyed an unusual period of peace since the U.S.-Russian agreement came into effect on Saturday.

The United Nations hopes the agreement will allow for peace talks to get under way towards settling the conflict that has killed more than 250,000 people and created refugee crises in the Middle East and Europe. More aid has been delivered into opposition-held areas since the agreement came into effect.

Just a few weeks ago, Syrians in opposition-held parts of Aleppo were trying to leave, fearing President Bashar al-Assad’s advancing forces were about to impose a siege after cutting rebel supply lines north of the city.

But this week, some of those who fled Aleppo, which has seen some of the Syrian war’s worst bombing and house-to-house fighting, have returned.

Aleppo resident Jamila al-Shabani said she had been out seeing parts of the city she had not visited in a long time because of what she described as her “self-imposed confinement” at home. “People were afraid to go out,” she said.

“The park yesterday was a beehive where children and families flocked,” added Abdullah Aslan, another Aleppo resident contacted by Reuters. “It was lovely and sunny. The park was full, people now when they go out with their families feel safer,” he said.

Before the war, tourists enjoyed Aleppo, Syria’s second city and one of the oldest inhabited in the world. Architectural gems — bathhouses, palaces, churches and mosques — studded Aleppo’s streets, making it one of the richest historical sites in the Middle East. Souks that traced their history back four millennia sold spices, the city’s trademark laurel soap and the antique textiles that were coveted in Europe.

BUSTLING MARKET

Residents contacted by Reuters described bustling scenes in the market, some likening it to the last-minute rush before the start of a big religious holiday. “People are more assured,” said Abdul Munim Juneid, an orphanage supervisor.

On the other side of the city, which is under government control, residents have also noticed a drop in insurgent shelling. But like Syrians in rebel-held territory, residents remain cautious and fearful. “Now, to a small degree, it is different. But there is still fear that any moment they will shell peaceful neighborhoods,” said 28-year-old Suheib Masry.

Both rebel groups and the Syrian government say they are respecting the cessation of hostilities agreement, while accusing each other of violating it.

The pace of the war is virtually unchanged in some parts of northern Syria, notably on frontlines near the border with Turkey where rebels report attacks by government forces seeking to seal the frontier.

The government is saying little about military operations in those areas, where rebel forces viewed as moderate by the West fight in close proximity to jihadists who are not included in the cessation of hostilities agreement.

While the government says it is cooperating with international efforts, the opposition is voicing deep misgivings. It says aid deliveries are reaching a fraction of those in need and that Assad is pressing his war effort in violation of the agreement.

Army helicopters have dropped leaflets calling on rebels to lay down their arms and vowing to fight those who resist.

“CALM BEFORE THE STORM”

Residents in the town of Jisr al-Shughour, captured by rebels from government forces last year, fear it is only a matter of time before the next offensive begins. They say there has been no let up in government shelling there.

“There is a lot of fear. There is paralysis with no buying or selling and those who have assets are trying to get rid of them,” said Abdullah Akhras, talking from a village near the town. “It’s the calm before the storm. This truce is nothing more than a preparation for a huge battle. They (the government) are now amassing forces to begin on every front.”

Still, in opposition-held areas near Damascus people are using the relative calm to see to long-neglected tasks such as repairing damaged homes and even tending to gardens.

“We now see the kids in the neighborhood going and coming and playing,” said Badran al Doumi, owner of a furniture store in the city of Douma to the east of Damascus.

The noise of vehicles has replaced the sound of warplanes that so frequently bomb the area, residents say.

Instead of carrying reports on casualty tolls from government attacks, the social media feed of a civil defense service operating in the area showed rescue workers repairing vehicles, cleaning mosques, and hosting a children’s party.

Just 5 miles away across the frontlines in government-controlled areas of Damascus, 60-year-old Samira al-Shawki hoped the calm would last. “The sounds of blasts are fewer to a degree, but we want it to stay this way,” she said.

(Additional reporting by Kinda Makieh in Damascus and Tom Perry in Beirut; Editing by Tom Perry and Peter Millership)

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)

18 killed in car bomb against Syrian insurgents in southern province Quneitra: monitor

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Eighteen fighters were killed in a car bomb blast that hit a Syrian insurgent group in the southern province of Quneitra on Wednesday, a monitoring group reported, and a rebel source said the attack was likely carried out by hardline Islamists.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the explosion took place in the village of al-Isha, hitting a base belonging to Jabhat Thuwwar Souria, a Free Syrian Army group.

Suhaib al-Ruhail, a spokesman for the Alwiyat al-Furqan group which operates in the area, said it was most likely carried out by “Daesh sleeper cells”, a reference to Islamic State.

The incident did not appear to be related to the current cessation of hostilities between the Syrian government and its allies and non-jihadist insurgent groups.

(Reporting by John Davison in Beirut and Suleiman Al-Khalidi in Amman; Editing by Hugh Lawson)