Assad blamed in Aleppo-aid stall; troops back off

This Thursday Sept. 1, 2016 file photo, provided by the Syria Press Center (SPC), an anti-government media group, shows civilians leaving the town of Suran, in Hama province, Syria.
This Thursday Sept. 1, 2016 file photo, provided by the Syria Press Center (SPC), an anti-government media group, shows civilians leaving the town of Suran, in Hama province, Syria.

BEIRUT -- Syria's military began withdrawing from a major route to Aleppo late Thursday as the United Nations envoy accused President Bashar Assad's government of obstructing aid from reaching the contested city.

A monitoring group reported three civilian fatalities, the first since the U.S.-Russian-brokered cease-fire took effect three days ago.

Meanwhile, Russia was expected to deploy its forces along Aleppo's Castello Road to ensure safe passage for humanitarian convoys to the city's opposition-held quarters.

As part of the truce deal, the rebels and the Syrian government are to agree to the deployment of a security force to protect checkpoints along the route to Aleppo to ensure aid delivery to the city's opposition sector, which has been besieged by Russian-backed government forces since July. The U.N. estimates that 250,000 people are trapped there.

The U.N. envoy to Syria, Staffan de Mistura, said that despite the drop in violence since the cease-fire took effect Monday, the flow of humanitarian aid that was supposed to follow has not materialized.

Speaking in Geneva, de Mistura blamed Assad's government for the delay.

He said the Syrian government has not provided the necessary "facilitation letters," or permits, to allow the aid convoys to reach opposition areas, disappointing even Russia, the Syrian president's key supporter.

De Mistura said 40 aid trucks were ready to move in and the U.N. would prioritize delivery to the embattled rebel-held eastern neighborhoods of Aleppo.

"That is what makes a difference for the people, apart from seeing no more bombs or mortar shelling taking place," he said of the aid deliveries.

"It is particularly regrettable," he said. "These are days which we should have used for convoys to move ... because there is no fighting."

Jan Egeland, the top humanitarian aid official in de Mistura's office, said the U.N. aid could reach its target areas in the country within a "few days" once the organization receives authorization.

"We could go today. We're not. ... The permits have not been given," he told reporters in Geneva.

"Our appeal is the following," Egeland said. "Can well-fed, grown men please stop putting political, bureaucratic and procedural roadblocks in the way of brave humanitarian workers who are willing and able to go to serve women, children and wounded civilians in besieged and cross-fire areas?"

The 40 trucks -- carrying rice, wheat and other items -- "can go at a moment's notice," he said.

The U.N. insisted Thursday that government forces would not be allowed to pick through the aid items that are headed to Aleppo, about 40 miles south of the Turkish border.

Once the trucks begin to move, "they will not be harassed," de Mistura said. "No saying: 'We will take out that medicine, and we will take that food.'"

Since 2011, troops at roadblocks have removed nearly 50 tons of medical supplies from aid convoys, according to the World Health Organization. The supplies include antibiotics, mental health medication, and kits to treat burns or help deliver babies.

Safety a concern

Another concern is safety along Castello Road, the only way in and out of eastern Aleppo.

Russia's military announced Thursday evening that Syrian government forces had begun withdrawing from the route, though the Pentagon said it had no indication of a withdrawal. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group also reported that government forces were leaving the area.

The rebels were expected to follow suit, according to U.N. and government officials, though there was no indication that they had done so late Thursday. The withdrawals will make way for the Syrian Arab Red Crescent to establish checkpoints along the road and direct aid convoys in.

It was not immediately clear who would secure the route, though the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group reported that Russian forces were taking up positions. The Russian military could not immediately be reached for confirmation.

In Moscow, a spokesman for Russia's defense ministry accused the United States of not fulfilling its obligations under the cease-fire agreement.

The spokesman, Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov, told the Interfax news service that rebel troops continued to fire artillery at government forces and had not separated themselves from units loyal to a former affiliate of al-Qaida that both the United States and Russia have deemed a terrorist organization.

Konashenkov also complained about statements by U.S. officials doubting whether Russia would fulfill the terms of the cease-fire.

"There's an impression that the goal of Washington's 'curtain of words' is an intention to hide the fact that it is not fulfilling its obligations, above all the separation of units of the 'moderate opposition' from the terrorists," Konashenkov said.

The text of the cease-fire agreement has not been released, and Russia said it was being kept private at the request of the U.S. Moscow wants the U.N. Security Council to endorse the agreement when the council meets Wednesday, Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said.

Russian and U.S. officials have said the agreement is intended to set the stage for peace talks to resolve the Syrian war, now in its sixth year.

Agreement skepticism

According to senior officials, the Syria cease-fire deal requires the U.S. military to shift surveillance aircraft from other regions and increase the number of intelligence analysts to coordinate attacks with Russia to target militants whom the U.S. has largely spared.

Senior defense and military officials said they are sorting out how the U.S.-Russia military partnership will take shape and how that will change where U.S. equipment and people will be deployed. They said, however, that they will need to take assets from other parts of the world because U.S. military leaders don't want to erode the current U.S.-led coalition campaign against the Islamic State extremist group in Iraq and Syria.

More military planners and targeting experts will be needed to identify and approve airstrikes against Jabhat Fatah al-Sham, the group formerly known as the Nusra Front. The U.S. has rarely bombed the group because the militants are often intermingled with other U.S.-backed Syrian rebels.

The Syria cease-fire deal struck by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is designed to pause the civil war so that the superpowers' militaries can be jointly concentrated against the Islamic extremist groups operating within the chaos on the ground. The concerns reflect the U.S. military's broader skepticism about partnering with Russia, which it says it distrusts.

Senior U.S. defense and military officials familiar with the planning spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to talk about the matter publicly.

Under the deal, if the cease-fire holds for seven days and humanitarian deliveries are allowed into areas besieged by the Syrian army, the U.S. and Russia would set up a Joint Implementation Center to focus on the militants and share basic targeting data.

State Department spokesman Mark Toner acknowledged the skepticism.

"I don't think that anyone in the U.S. government is necessarily taking at face value Russia's or certainly not the Syrian regime's commitment to this arrangement," Toner said. "I also think some of the comments from the Department of Defense were just about speaking to the fact that there's logistical challenges of setting up the JIC and coordinating these airstrikes, and that's going to require additional effort and additional time."

He added, however, "What really matters here is that the president of the United States supports this agreement, and our system of government works in such a way that everyone follows what the president says."

U.S. defense officials said they have begun working out some of the details, even though they are hamstrung by existing U.S. law that prohibits any military-to-military relations with Russia, as a result of Moscow's annexation of the Crimea region of Ukraine.

Defense Secretary Ashton Carter must submit a waiver to Congress along with a report detailing why military cooperation with Russia is necessary. U.S. officials said Carter hasn't done that yet.

Cease-fire casualties

Activists reported that the cease-fire was holding despite some violations, though the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group warned that the rate of violations had escalated and three civilians were killed, including two children.

The Britain-based Observatory, which relies on a network of activists on the ground, said one girl was killed when missiles fired by rebels hit a village in the southern province of Quneitra. Another child died of wounds suffered from sniper fire in al-Masharfeh, a government-held neighborhood in Aleppo. The third casualty, according to the Observatory, was a civilian who also died of sniper fire in the rebel-held part of Aleppo.

Aleppo has been the center of fighting in recent months, and Syrian government forces and their allies launched a wide offensive earlier this month, capturing several areas south of the city and putting eastern rebel-held neighborhoods under siege for the second time in two months.

More than 2,000 people were killed in 40 days of fighting in Aleppo until the cease-fire went into effect Monday. The dead include 700 civilians, among them 160 children, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

"No aid has arrived in Aleppo. The regime is refusing to allow aid into Aleppo," said an activist based in the city, Baraa al-Halaby.

The state-run Syrian Arab News Agency said opposition fighters opened fire at a location along the Castello Road that was being prepared for Red Crescent representatives, and two people guarding the area were wounded.

SANA also reported violations in the northwestern village of Foua, saying insurgent sniper fire wounded a Syrian boy. It said three shells were also fired at the government-held southern village of Hadar.

Meanwhile, in the eastern province of Deir el-Zour, clashes and shelling over the past 24 hours between government forces and the Islamic State extremist group in the provincial capital, also called Deir el-Zour, killed at least three people, including a child, according to activists and state media.

Elsewhere in the province, an airstrike on the Islamic State-held town of Mayadeen killed at least nine people and wounded dozens, according to opposition activists and Deir el-Zour 24, an activist collective. The Observatory said the airstrike killed 23 people. It wasn't known who carried out the attack.

Information for this article was contributed by Jamey Keaten, Philip Issa and Bassem Mroue of The Associated Press; by Erin Cunningham, Andrew Roth, Zakaria Zakaria and Louisa Loveluck of The Washington Post

A Section on 09/16/2016

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