Iran welcomes Syria truce plan, calls for ‘comprehensive monitoring’

Airstrikes killed more than 100 people, women and children among them, in northwest Syria on Saturday and Sunday just hours after the United States and Russian Federation had announced a new ceasefire agreement, Al Jazeera reports.

The arrangement divided rebel factions, who have depended on the might of an Al Qaeda-linked faction – Jabhat Fatah Al Sham, renamed from Jabhat Al Nusra after it said it was severing ties with Al Qaeda – to battle government forces around Aleppo.

In this September 9, 2016 file-pool photo, Secretary of State John Kerry talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov during their joint news conference following their meeting to discuss the crisis in Syria, in Geneva, Switzerland.

The deal has received the endorsement of President Bashar al-Assad’s government and its key allies – Russia, Iran and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.

“The Islamist factions and Jabhat Fatah al-Sham will abide by the cease-fire without publicly declaring it”, said the official. Both Assad’s forces and the USA -backed rebels would cease attacks, while the US and Russian Federation would join forces against Islamic State and al-Qaida-linked militants.

The Iranian spokesman, however, underlined that the ceasefire does not apply to the terrorist groups, including Daesh (ISIL), al-Nusra Front or other newly-born offshoots, calling on the worldwide community to keep battling against the Takfiri extremists seriously, without any consideration and incessantly.

Rebels have been fighting alongside Jabhat Fatah Al Sham around Aleppo as they try to break a government siege that was reimposed this month.

The airstrikes landed in the rebel-held areas of Idlib and Aleppo, according to the monitoring group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. It is not clear how the government will distinguish between the two, and whether it can strike at the Fatah al-Sham group without hitting other rebels as well.

Six civilians were killed in air strikes on Aleppo yesterday, it said.

Forty days of fighting in Aleppo has killed almost 700 civilians, including 160 children, according to a Syrian human rights group. As shoppers flocked to a market to purchase gifts for the upcoming Eid holiday, Al Jazeera’s Adham Abu al-Husam reports that a Russian jet attacked from above, killing 55 civilians – 13 women and 13 children among them, CNN reports.