Russia rejects idea of no-fly zone in Syria

The dead included patients. This was the case of the makeshift clinic run by the charity in the Syrian town of Maaret al-Numan, which was hit four times in attacks on Monday, killing at least 25 people.

The previous death toll was 11.

“People in those areas are waiting and there is nothing to help them because [they are in] besieged areas, and actually majority are now dying”, Almilaji said.

Jimon is a truck driver supporting the relief effort organized by the United Nations to get food, medicine and other supplies to Syrians who lack most of the basics needed to survive.

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said six trucks also entered al-Fouaa and Kafraya – two towns under siege by the government since 2012.

“But look, Russian warplanes swarm there and thousands, tens of thousands of are being oppressed”, Erdoğan said February 17 in an address in Ankara.

“We reject these accusations and we condemn this act”, SDF spokesman Tareq Abu Zeid told Syria Direct on Thursday.

Trucks carrying humanitarian assistance destined for besieged areas near Damascus are still parked on a highway on the edge of the capital.

“In fact, the Syrian government is the one that needs to test the credibility of the United Nations envoy”, a statement said.

The Syrian Kurds are trying to create a Kurdish autonomous region in northern Syria by uniting two territories separated by about 100 kilometres of land controlled by Islamist rebels, according to Anton Lavrov, an independent Russian military analyst.

The convoys represent the third aid delivery to the blockaded communities after two other efforts last month.

Schaefer gave no further details, however, on how such a no-fly zone would function.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said U.S.-supplied weapons had been used against civilians by a Syrian Kurdish militia group that Ankara blames for a deadly suicide bombing, and said he would talk to President Barack Obama about it later on Friday.

Turkey regards the Syrian Democratic Union Party, and its military wing, the People’s Protection Units, as terrorists due to their affiliation to Turkey’s outlawed Kurdish rebel group.

Since Syrian government forces began their assault on Aleppo province, in northern Syria, at the beginning of the month, trauma services have been severely hindered, Almilaji said. The United States and others have called on Turkey to hold its fire.

Erdogan insisted that evidence obtained by the Turkish authorities pointed to the group. She said it could be done by an agreement with Assad, his backers and the coalition fighting the Islamic State group – a proposal that analysts say is now unrealistic and more an attempt to appease Turkey.

The German government says Chancellor Angela Merkel has spoken with Turkey’s leaders to offer her condolences after the bombing that targeted military personnel in Ankara killed 28 people. “Including for the Syrians themselves”, Churkin said adding that “it was the effective operations of Russian air forces that allowed them [Syrian army] to push their opponents back from Damascus”. According to Reuters, Russia’s air strikes even allowed U.S.-backed Kurdish fighters to advance rapidly in northern Syria.

Syria’s government had approved access to seven besieged areas, including the city of Madaya where dozens of people were thought to have died from starvation, a spokeswoman for the UN’s humanitarian affairs office said.

On Assad’s comments about fighting on in Syria, Churkin said in the interview: “In this case I think that we ought to be guided not by what he (Assad) says, with all my respect to the remarks of such a high-ranking person, but by what he does in the end”.