Despite cease-fire, fighting erupts in Syrian capital

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry discussed the situation in Syria by phone on Friday and are “generally satisfied” with the truce, the Foreign Ministry said in a website statement.

As Human Rights Watch has documented, this is not the first time the Syrian government has blocked aid from getting to besieged areas.

And that’s why it is outrageous that the Syrian government continues to unlawfully block aid to besieged and hard-to-reach areas, like the densely populated opposition-held eastern Aleppo, Homs, and towns in the countryside outside Damascus.

Military Media, the media arm of Lebanon’s Shiite militant group Hezbollah, said demonstrators from the Shiite villages of Nubul and Zahraa in Aleppo province have started a march toward Castello road to demand that no aid be allowed into eastern Aleppo until aid is sent to two Shiite villages besieged by insurgents in the nearby province of Idlib.

The ceasefire deal calls for the demilitarisation of the key Castello Road into the city, and Russian Federation yesterday said that Syrian armed forces were “fulfilling their obligations and have started a gradual withdrawal” from the route.

Assad’s regime continued to hold up delivery of United Nations aid that was supposed to move unhindered under a U.S. Russian Federation intervened with its air force on the side of President Bashar Assad’s government a year ago, turning the tide of the war in his favor.

He also noted that rebel-controlled local authorities have yet to guarantee unhindered deliveries of aid. SANA said the shelling violates the cease-fire.

The deal, which began on September 12 and was initially agreed to last seven days, calls for increased humanitarian aid for those trapped inside the embattled northwestern city of Aleppo.

He says that under the deal, opposition units were supposed to move away in lockstep but have failed to do so. The Pentagon said it had no indication of a withdrawal.

Syrian activists reported that Russian troops were deploying along the road, while the Russian Defense Ministry only mentioned it had military observers on the road.

The UN’s Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura said the truce was holding “by and large”.

For more than five years, Castello Road has been partitioned between government forces and rebels who seek to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Meanwhile, Russian presidential spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said that the ceasefire was “by and large” holding steady despite complaints of violations, but urged the U.S. to do more to influence the rebel groups it supports in Syria.

“We are still optimistic this will happen, but no one knows”, he said.

The claims against the Assad regime followed other claims by Russia’s military that more than 60 violations by rebels have occurred since the cease-fire took effect Monday. CBS News correspondent Elizabeth Palmer was on the vital road Thursday, standing in front of a checkpoint manned by Syrian troops, and she said they didn’t appear to be going anywhere fast at that stage.

Supporting the opposition, France became the first United States ally to openly question the ceasefire deal with Moscow, pressing Washington to reveal details of the agreement.

An activist with the opposition-aligned group Aleppo Media Center said people are hopeful this initiative will work, even though past agreements have fallen apart since the conflict began in 2011. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on a conference call: “In general, we can still state that the process is moving forward, despite some setbacks”.

The observatory said the army had started to withdraw from positions on the road, but Russian troops, whose air force has helped Damascus to blockade rebel-held Aleppo, had replaced it.

Russian Federation issued its criticism after the United Nations said Syria hadn’t provided the necessary permission for its aid convoy to go to rebel-held eastern Aleppo, where 300,000 civilians are trapped.

“There seems to be little pullback by both sides [Syrian government and rebels] on that road to allow this aid in”, Al Jazeera’s Charles Stratford, reporting from Gazientep on the Turkish border with Syria, said.