Russia Says It’s Ready for 48-Hour Aleppo Truce

UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura said Thursday that he was planning on calling a meeting of the humanitarian aid task force next week in Geneva.

“I insist, on behalf of the Secretary General: to have a 48-hour pause in Aleppo, to start with, would require some heavy lifting not only by the two co-chairs (Russia and the United States) but also those who have influence on the ground”, Reuters cited de Mistura as saying.

“I made a decision to use my privilege as Chair to declare that there was no sense in having a humanitarian meeting today unless we got some action on the humanitarian side in Syria”, UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura told reporters in Geneva, following a meeting of no more than eight minutes, co-chaired by Russian Federation and the United States.

The office of Staffan de Mistura welcomes Russia’s readiness – expressed earlier on Thursday – to support a pause in fighting in the northern Syrian city, starting next week, so that humanitarian aid can get in.

Aleppo, Syria’s most populous pre-war city and its commercial hub, has become the focus of fighting in the five-year-old civil war.

The eastern Syrian city of Dayr al-Zawr, which is held by the militants, has continued to receive aid over the past month through World Food Programme air drops, de Mistura said, adding, however, that four other besieged areas have not been reached by a convoy in 110 days. He says Russian Federation was read.

“More precise date and time will be determined after receiving information about the readiness of the convoys from the United Nations representatives and receiving confirmation of the security guarantees of their safe travel from our American partners”, Konashenkov said.

Russian Federation first announced on Tuesday that its planes started flying combat missions from Iran against targets in Syria, a move that represented a historical rapprochement between Moscow and Tehran that could rile US -allied Gulf neighbors, strengthen Syrian President Bashar Assad and impact the war against the Islamic State group.

The decision was announced yesterday as a haunting photo of a young boy rescued from beneath rubble of his home after a devastating air strike in Aleppo provoked outrage around the world.