Syria task force hopes for humanitarian access

In an interview with AFP released on February 12, Assad asserted that all opposition groups that have taken up arms against the government are “terrorists”, and thus his forces can continue to fight them during peace negotiations.

Convincing the Assad regime and its opposition groups to stop fighting a war that’s killed thousands and displaced millions already won’t be easy but some experts are optimistic, with one saying if it was ever going to happen over the five years of the war, it would happen now.

According to the Russian defense ministry, 510 combat sorties were carried out across Syria by its warplanes last week alone, many of them focused on supporting Syrian troop advances aimed an encircling Aleppo.

The UN has said that only around a dozen of 116 access requests to reach Syrians in need have been granted.

Mr Assad was speaking in Damascus on Thursday, ahead of the deal on the cessation of hostilities that was agreed in Munich late on Thursday night.

Staffan de Mistura said in an interview with NPR radio in the United States on Friday that the cessation of hostilities means all parties will stop using heavy weapons and “that’s what Syrian people are waiting for – no more bombing, no more mortars”.

“The mass scale of deaths of detainees suggests that the government of Syria is responsible for acts that amount to extermination as a crime against humanity”, Paulo Pinheiro, the head of the UN-backed Commission of Inquiry on Syria, said on Monday.

Assad said his government has “fully believed in negotiations and in political action since the beginning of the crisis”. “They say they will only keep on fighting the terrorists, but they call all of us terrorists”.

He said in a statement Friday that “the people of Syria – in Aleppo, Madaya, Foua and Kfarya, Deir el-Zour and elsewhere – need an end to the brutal violence and bombing, the sieges, denial of free movement, food and medical care”.

But Russia and Syria have continued to insist that the opponents they are fighting in Aleppo, including those backed by Turkey and Saudi Arabia, are “terrorists” and thus their campaign can proceed under the truce agreement, which exempts fighting against recognized terrorist groups. Turkey says up to 40,000 have arrived in camps north of Aleppo, just inside the Syrian border.

Waiting in a cold drizzle, the men, who had come to Turkey to earn money, were trying to cross the border back into Syria to bring their families out to safety.

Meanwhile, a new United Nations task force set up to coordinate aid distribution was expected to convene in Geneva later on Friday.

The working group on the ceasefire in Syria, which will be chaired by Russia and the USA, is scheduled to meet in Geneva, Switzerland next week, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov told TASS.

Even if Russian Federation decides only to target the Nusra Front, Azm highlights another problem, which is that Nusra fighters are integrated in many larger rebel positions, making it hard to distinguish who’s who. He said aid convoys have been denied access and left on stand-by “for too long”.

Why is there a war in Syria?

Since launching airstrikes in Syria at the end of September, Russia has come under worldwide criticism amid reports Moscow is targeting civilians and Syrian opposition groups in an effort to prop up the Assad government.

The minister has previously stressed that the Russian air campaign against the Islamic State (IS, Daesh, formerly ISIS/ISIL) and Jabhat al-Nusra terror groups in Syria will continue, regardless of the ceasefire.