Activists say airstrike kills 4 in eastern Syria

He said 40 aid trucks are ready to move and his priority is getting aid into the embattled rebel-held neighborhoods of the northern Syrian city of Aleppo.

The U.S. will not share the full text of a recent deal with Russian Federation on a truce in Syria, the State Department said Thursday.

The Russian military said it has complained to the U.S.at a joint working group in Geneva about the opposition’s failure to pull back in sync with the Syrian army, but received no immediate response. Another child died of wounds sustained earlier from sniper fire in al-Masharfeh, a government-held neighborhood in Aleppo city.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the fighting between government troops and rebels is concentrated in the neighborhood of Jobar, next to Qaboun, where rebels have had a presence for years.

At least 23 people died in airstrikes in Syria on Thursday.

Russian Federation countered that the USA was guilty of “non-fulfillment” of its own obligations under the cessation of hostilities to stop “moderate” rebels backed by the US from attacking areas controlled by the forces of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

However, the United Nations envoy to Syria, Staffan de Mistura, said despite the dramatic drop in violence since the cease-fire took effect on Monday, the humanitarian aid that was supposed to follow had not materialized.

“Syrian government troops and opposition forces would need to withdraw up to 3km from the road with their heavy weapons”.

“The regime has not withdrawn from the area”, Zakaria Malahifji of the Aleppo-based Fastaqim rebel group told Reuters on Friday.

However, de Mistura said the Syrian government had not provided the necessary “facilitation letters”, or permits, to allow for convoys to reach opposition areas, disappointing even Russian Federation, the Syrian president key backer. Aid is expected to enter rebel-held Aleppo later Friday, he said. “The UN has a detailed operational plan in place and is ready to respond with humanitarian assistance once we get the go ahead”.

Staffan de Mistura, the special envoy, noted that aid for eastern Aleppo, which also required permission from the regime, was being blocked by the Syrian government and opposition fighters. Aid delivery is also an important way to judge if a ceasefire is successful.

The Security Council had been scheduled to meet Friday to discuss the agreement, but the session was cancelled at the last minute because the US did not want to make the details public, according to Russian and USA officials.

East Aleppo, where around 250,000 civilians are besieged by government forces, is a major concern for humanitarian organizations.

The convoys have been waiting and sleeping at the border now for 48 hours so they could go on a minutes notice, he underscored.

“No-one here. while the kids have gone out to the streets to play and people are walking around the streets – there’s nobody driving around the streets because there’s no fuel, there’s no gasoline, there’s no diesel fuel, the marketplaces are all closed because there’s no food to sell, restaurants are all closed because they can’t buy the food to make their products, those people who were badly injured in the fierce attacks in the days leading up to the cessation of hostilities cannot leave because of the siege that’s around the city – so, no, nobody is expecting that this is going to lead to a settlement of some sort”.

Nevertheless, the ceasefire appears to have offered a respite in the civil war that’s killed an estimated 430,000 people since 2011 and touched off an worldwide refugee crisis.

It says Thursday that government forces will not start pulling out until the rebels begin to do the same. “But so far it’s been the best days seen since five-plus years ago”.

Its ally, Assad, appears as uncompromising as ever.

The hope is that the cease-fire will eventually lead to a political transition in Damascus, but the situation on the ground may dictate otherwise.

Russian Federation wants the U.N. Security Council to endorse the Syrian cease-fire agreement that it brokered together with the United States.

According to US officials, if Russian Federation and the regime fulfill their obligations under the arrangement, Washington and Moscow will hold bilateral talks on potential military cooperation against Daesh and also Nusrah Front, which recently detached itself with al-Qaeda and rebranded itself as Jabhat Fateh al-Sham.

The cease-fire that took effect Monday is the latest effort by Russian Federation and the U.S.to ease the 5 1/2-year conflict in Syria.

A U.S. official told CNN Friday that until the humanitarian aid begins to flow, the Pentagon will not consider the Russians or the regime to be in compliance with the ceasefire agreement.

Rebels say Damascus has carried out numerous violations. “First of all, on the separation of forces of “moderate opposition” and terrorists”.

U.S. Department of Defense chief spokesman Peter Cook earlier said that Washington has asked the Syrian Kurdish partner forces not to fly the American flag on their own but was unaware of this particular instance. The drivers piloting the aid trucks will have to navigate through a war zone on roads that are in very poor condition.