Syrian army declares ceasefire over

 

Damascus / AFP

Syria’s armed forces said on Monday that a week-long ceasefire brokered by the United States and Russia was over, blaming rebels for the failure of the truce.
US Secretary of State John Kerry said meanwhile that the terms had not been met for a key aspect of the deal — US-Russia cooperation against extremists in Syria.
In a statement carried by state news agency SANA, Syria’s army said a freeze on fighting it had announced last week had ended, blaming rebel groups it said “did not commit to a single element” of the truce deal.
“Syria’s army announces the end of the freeze on fighting that began at 7:00 pm (1600 GMT) on September 12, 2016 in accordance with the US-Russia agreement,” the statement said.
The truce backed by world powers aimed to help end Syria’s brutal five-year conflict, which has killed more than 300,000 people and displaced millions.
But after several days of relative calm, fighting escalated across major battlefronts, culminating in a deadly US-led air raid at the weekend on a Syrian army position and fresh strikes on Aleppo.
The truce “was supposed to be a real chance to stop the bloodshed, but the armed terrorist groups flouted this agreement,” Monday’s army statement said. Syria’s armed forces “exercised the highest degree of self-restraint while facing violations by terrorist groups,” it said.
Kerry — who brokered the deal along with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov — said in New York that Russia had failed to meet its side of a deal to enforce the truce, but that Washington was willing to keep working on it.
Under the terms of an agreement, the US military would set up a joint cell with Russian forces to target Syrian extremists if the ceasefire held.
Kerry had earlier insisted the ceasefire was “holding but fragile”.
He told reporters on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly that American officials were “meeting now with the Russians in Geneva. That process is continuing and we’ll see where we are in the course of the day.”
Violence increased across the country on Monday, with fierce clashes reported east of Damascus and one child killed in regime shelling on the edges of Aleppo.
Since September 12, 27 civilians, including nine children, have been killed in areas where the truce had been set to take hold, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
The bloodiest day for civilians was Sunday, when a barrel bomb attack killed 10 in a southern rebel-held town and one woman died in the first raids on Aleppo since the truce started.
The ceasefire came under additional strain after a US-led coalition strike hit a Syrian army post Saturday near the eastern city of Deir Ezzor, where government forces are battling the IS extremist group.
Syrian President Bashar Al Assad said Monday the coalition raid showed world powers support “terrorist organisations” like IS.
“The latest example of this is the flagrant American aggression on one of the Syrian army’s positions in Deir Ezzor,” he said.

Air raid was ‘intentional’
Senior government adviser Buthaina Shaaban said Sunday that Damascus believed the raid, which killed at least 62 Syrian soldiers, had been “intentional”.
Loyalist forces backed by Russian and Syrian warplanes were fighting to roll back IS’s advance there, a military source said on Monday.
Under the US-Russia agreement, fighting was to have halted across Syria and humanitarian aid would reach civilians suffering increasingly dire humanitarian conditions.
On Monday, convoys of food and medical aid reached two hard-to-reach areas, according to David Swanson, a spokesman for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
Aid was delivered to tens of thousands in rebel-held Talbisseh, where at least two people were killed by shelling during the truce.
Another 78,000 people living in and around Greater Orum in the north of Aleppo province would also receive flour and health supplies, Swanson said.
But convoys to rebel-held districts of Aleppo were still stuck on the border with Turkey.
UN humanitarian chief Stephen O’Brien said he was “pained” that Aleppo had still not received promised aid deliveries.

World leaders focus on refugees as Syria truce under threat

United Nations / AFP

A summit to address the biggest refugee crisis since World War II opens at the United Nations on Monday, overshadowed by the ongoing war in Syria and faltering US-Russian efforts to halt the fighting.
World leaders will adopt a political declaration at the first-ever summit on refugees and migrants that human rights groups have already dismissed as falling short of the needed international response.
Amnesty International has labeled the summit a “missed opportunity” to come up with a global plan while Human Rights Watch has called out countries like Brazil, Japan and South Korea that have taken in a only handful of refugees, or no refugees at all, in the case of Russia.
A record-breaking 65 million people are on the move worldwide, fleeing wars such as the carnage in Syria, repression and poverty, including 21 million refugees competing for too few resettlement opportunities.
Now in its sixth year, the war in Syria has driven nearly nine million people from their homes while an additional four million have fled to neighboring countries or are making the perilous journey to Europe.
The summit kicks off a week of high-level diplomacy as world leaders are set to address the annual General Assembly meeting, which this year will be dominated by the conflict in Syria.
A ceasefire deal brokered by Russia and the United States was under threat after rebel-held Aleppo came under renewed attack while the US-led coalition killed dozens of Syrian soldiers in a strike that Washington says was unintentional.

Resettling refugees
During negotiations leading up to the summit, a proposal by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to resettle 10 percent of the global refugee population was dropped from the non-binding draft declaration.
“We really don’t feel that there is a strong political will,” Francoise Sivignon, president of the aid group Medecins du Monde, said.
Sivignon said she was particularly concerned with the failure to offer protection to child refugees who are “extraordinarily vulnerable” when they are separated from their families.
Rejecting the criticism, Ban’s representative, Karen Abuzayd, said the summit could lead to a significant increase in the number of safe havens for refugees worldwide.
The 193 UN member-states will agree to meet the targets set by the UN refugee agency, which is advocating for the resettlement of five percent of the global refugee population, she said.
That would amount to 1.1 million resettlements in 2017, compared to 100,000 in 2015, Abuzayd said.
“It’s 10 times as many,” she said. “Things will change gradually.”
Ban is to launch a global campaign against xenophobia at a time when welcoming migrants and refugees has become a divisive issue in Europe and the United States.
On Tuesday, US President Barack Obama will host a second summit at which some 40 countries will make new offers of aid, either by taking in more refugees or supporting access to education and jobs.
Only eight countries currently host more than half the world’s refugees: Turkey, Pakistan, Lebanon, Iran, Ethiopia, Jordan, Kenya and Uganda.
Six of the world’s richest countries — the United States, China, Japan, Britain, Germany and France — hosted only 1.8 million refugees last year, just seven percent of the world total, according to research by the British charity Oxfam.

UN aid chief ‘pained’ Aleppo aid remains blocked

Geneva / AFP

The UN’s humanitarian chief said on Monday he was “pained” that aid convoys had not deployed to eastern Aleppo, as a ceasefire in Syria teetered on the brink of collapse.
The delivery of desperately needed supplies to Aleppo’s rebel-held east and besieged areas across the country was a key component of the truce agreed by the United States and Russia that came into force last week.
But UN trucks carrying life-saving supplies destined for Aleppo have been stuck in a buffer zone between the Turkish and Syrian borders since early last week.
“I am pained and disappointed that a United Nations convoy has yet to cross into Syria from Turkey, and safely reach eastern Aleppo, where up to 275,000 people remain trapped without food, water, proper shelter or medical care,” said a statement from Stephen O’Brien, who heads the UN’s humanitarian office (OCHA).
The US-Russia deal included specific measures aimed at getting aid into eastern Aleppo.
The pact called for Syrian troops to withdraw from the Castello Road supply route into the city, which regime forces seized in early July, cutting off aid to Aleppo’s east.
The UN has said its trucks would not roll until Washington and Moscow signalled that the Castello Road was clear and safe.
Addressing the UN rights council on Monday, the head of the United Nations Commission of Inquiry for Syria, Paulo Pinheiro, sounded a further call for “unimpeded, sustained and rapid humanitarian access to all those in need.”
“Roadblocks made of red tape are just as effective as roadblocks made of weapons of war,” he told the council.
Meanwhile, fears mounted Monday that the fragile truce was failing.
Regime ally Russia and the US, which backs some opposition groups, have blamed each other for cracks in the ceasefire.
Moscow and Damascus have blasted Washington over airstrikes that killed scores of Syrian soldiers on Saturday in Deir Ezzor, which is partly held by the IS group. The Pentagon has conceded that Syrian troops may have been hit in the raid targeting IS.
Syria’s envoy to the UN in Geneva, Hussam Edin Aala, charged in the rights council that the US strikes were “planned and deliberate.”

Rebel violations make truce ‘pointless’: Russia

Moscow / AFP

Russia’s defence ministry on Monday appeared to bury a week-long Syria ceasefire brokered with the United States, saying rebel violations made it “pointless” for government troops to uphold the truce.
“Considering that the conditions of the ceasefire are not being respected by the rebels, we consider it pointless for the Syrian government forces to respect it unilaterally,” Lieutenant General
Sergei Rudskoy said in a televised briefing.
Rudskoy said the United States and rebel groups it backs “have not fulfilled one of the obligations taken upon themselves as part of the Geneva agreements,” referring to a truce deal struck earlier this month in the Swiss city.
He said “the main issue” was that moderate opposition units had not been separated from the fighters of Syria’s former Al-Qaeda affiliate on the ground. The comments come with the ceasefire already appearing to teeter on the brink of collapse after a US-led coalition strike killed dozens of regime soldiers on Saturday and the ravaged city of Aleppo was targeted by its first raids in nearly a week.
Since the ceasefire came into force a week ago, Russia and the United States have blamed each other for not doing enough to fulfill the deal, with relations strained even further by Saturday’s deadly strikes.
Damascus’ major ally Moscow insists that Syrian forces have fully respected the truce — which is meant to end hostilities and ensure aid deliveries — but that rebels have kept up bombardments.
Rudskoy said that the week-long truce had been violated 302 times and that 63 civilians had been killed.
The truce also includes the demilitarisation of the Castello Road, the main route for humanitarian assistance into the divided Syrian city of Aleppo.
Rudskoy said that the rebels had not withdrawn their military hardware from the area, preventing Syrian troops from doing the same.