Thursday, March 28, 2024 | Ramadan 17, 1445 H
broken clouds
weather
OMAN
23°C / 23°C
EDITOR IN CHIEF- ABDULLAH BIN SALIM AL SHUEILI

No air strikes in northwest Syria after ceasefire

1284028
1284028
minus
plus

BEIRUT: A ceasefire in northwest Syria reduced violence in the rebel bastion, a monitor said, with no air strikes on Friday after a three-month-long army offensive killed hundreds while yielding no big territorial gains.


Though the combatants exchanged fire on Friday, a rebel commander and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said there were no government or Russian air raids.


More than 400 civilians have been killed in the escalation since late April and more than 440,000 uprooted, the United Nations said last week.


The region is part of the last major piece of territory rebels hold after facing defeat across much of Syria at the hands of President Bashar al Assad with his allies Russia and Iran.


Syrian state media had said the ceasefire would start on Thursday night if militants fulfilled a Russian-Turkish deal which tried last year to create a demilitarised buffer zone.


Turkey-backed opposition officials, who agreed to the ceasefire during talks in Kazakhstan, said it must “guarantee the safety of civilians”. They reserved the right to respond to “violations by Assad’s regime and its militias”.


Though Turkey-backed rebel factions operate in Idlib province in the northwest, the dominant force there is the Tahrir al Sham alliance, formerly the Nusra Front.


It did not reject the ceasefire in a statement on Friday but said any attack from the other side would cancel it, vowing to retaliate. It said the truce proved the failure of “the criminal regime’s military operation against the liberated north.”


Russia’s RIA news agency cited a Kazakh Foreign Ministry official as saying the agreement does not include fighters who might not observe it.


“There are no air strikes but the planes have not stopped flying above... There are no attempts to advance on either side,” Colonel Mustafa Bakour, a commander in the Jaish al Izza rebel faction, said.


Syrian state news agency Sana said militants fired missiles that hit a village in government territory, killing one person and injuring three other civilians on Friday.


Under its deals with Moscow, Ankara has forces stationed on the ground in the Idlib region at a dozen military positions.


“In every talk we hold with Russia, we tell them the (Syrian) regime needs to stop its attacks... but the situation is apparent,” Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman Hami Aksoy said.


A series of truce deals have failed to fully end Idlib fighting and Russian-Turkish attempts have not managed to resolve the eight-year conflict. — Reuters


SHARE ARTICLE
arrow up
home icon