Syria truce teeters on brink after US-led raid kills troops
afp
Beirut
Syria's ceasefire was hanging by a thread on Sunday, after tensions escalated between Moscow and Washington over a US-led coalition air strike that killed dozens of Syrian soldiers battling jihadists.
The truce saw violence drop across Syria for several days after it came into force Monday, but fighting has since erupted on several fronts and besieged civilians are still waiting desperately for promised aid deliveries.
The ceasefire`s co-sponsors, Russia and the United States, have traded accusations over the fraying deal, with relations strained even further after the US-led raid killed scores of Syrian soldiers on Saturday.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 90 soldiers were killed in the strike. Damascus ally Moscow put the death toll at 62.
The Syrian army said the raid had allowed Islamic State group fighters to gain ground around the key eastern airbase of Deir Ezzor, but a military source said government forces were back on the offensive on Sunday.
"The army has retaken most of its positions on Jabal Therdeh with Russian and Syrian air support," the source said.
He was referring to hilltop positions that overlook the airbase. Retaking them is vital for the army to prevent IS using them to fire on aircraft taking off from or landing at the base.
The base and adjacent government-held neighbourhoods of Deir Ezzor city have been under siege since 2012 and have been dependent on resupply by air.Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said Russian warplanes pounded IS positions around Deir Ezzor late Saturday as fierce clashes broke out between IS and forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad.
At least 38 jihadist fighters were killed and clashes were ongoing, Abdel Rahman told AFP.
On Sunday, the IS-linked Amaq news agency said IS shot down a Syrian warplane. Abdel Rahman confirmed the attack and said the pilot was killed.
Hours after the coalition strike on Saturday, the Pentagon admitted US-led pilots may have hit Assad`s forces but said that they "believed they were striking a Daesh (IS) fighting position."
The statement said coalition forces "would not intentionally strike a known Syrian military unit" and that an investigation was underway.
Australia, which said it was one of several coalition countries whose aircraft took part, offered its "condolences to the families of any Syrian personnel killed or wounded."
Russia called an emergency UN Security Council meeting late Saturday to demand an explanation from the US.
US ambassador Samantha Power said that Washington regretted the loss of life, but that Moscow`s request for the meeting was "a "stunt, replete with moralism and grandstanding."
In an exchange reminiscent of Cold War-era verbal jousting, Russian ambassador Vitaly Churkin accused the US of violating agreements that it would not target Syrian army positions.
He called the strike a "bad omen" for a US-Russian deal on halting the war in Syria, which has left more than 300,000 people dead since it erupted in March 2011.
"These strikes endanger everything that has been done so far by the international community" to end the conflict, foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said. The truce agreement -- negotiated by US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov -- came into force on Monday evening.
The Britain-based Observatory, which has a broad network of sources across Syria, reported a drop in violence across all major fronts in the country where IS was not present.
But fighting began to build up again late last week, including in the central provinces of Homs and Hama, and the rebel-held eastern suburbs of Damascus.
The front line remained quiet in divided second city Aleppo, but civilians have yet to see any aid deliveries -- a key component of the truce deal.
The head of Fateh al-Sham Front, which changed its name from Al-Nusra Front after renouncing its ties to Al-Qaeda, said late Saturday that "neither we nor rebel groups will allow the siege of Aleppo to continue."
In an interview broadcast by Al-Jazeera television, Abu Mohamed al-Jolani said negotiations were under way for anti-regime groups to band together in a single organisation.
Such a merger would throw a major wrench in the US-Russia deal, which foresaw cooperation between the two world powers against jihadist groups, including Fateh al-Sham as well as IS, if the truce holds for a week
UN calls for emergency meeting
Reuters
BEIRUT/MOSCOW: US-led coalition air strikes reportedly killed dozens of Syrian soldiers on Saturday, endangering a US-Russian brokered ceasefire and prompting an emergency UN Security Council meeting as tensions between Moscow and Washington escalated.
The United States military said the coalition stopped the attacks against what it had believed to be ISIS positions in northeast Syria after Russia informed it that Syrian military personnel and vehicles may have been hit.
The 15-member Security Council met on Saturday night after Russia demanded an emergency session to discuss the incident and accused the United States of jeopardizing the Syria deal.
The US ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, chastised Russia for the move.
"Russia really needs to stop the cheap point scoring and the grandstanding and the stunts and focus on what matters, which is implementation of something we negotiated in good faith with them," Power said.
She said the United States was investigating the air strikes and "if we determine that we did indeed strike Syrian military personnel, that was not our intention and we of course regret the loss of life."
When asked if the incident spelled the end of the Syria deal between Moscow and Washington, Russia's UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said: "This is a very big question mark."
"I would be very interested to see how Washington is going to react. If what Ambassador Power has done today is any indication of their possible reaction then we are in serious trouble," Churkin said.
Moscow cited the strikes, which allowed ISIS fighters to briefly overrun a Syrian army position near Deir al-Zor airport, as evidence that the United States was helping the jihadist militants.
"We are reaching a really terrifying conclusion for the whole world: That the White House is defending Islamic State. Now there can be no doubts about that," the RIA Novosti news agency quoted Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova as saying.
Power said Zakharova should be embarassed by that claim. Churkin said Russia had no "specific evidence" of the United States colluding with ISIS terrorists.
Zakharova said the strikes threatened to undermine the ceasefire in Syria brokered by Russia, which has been aiding Syria's President Bashar al-Assad in the civil war, and the United States, which has backed some rebel groups.
The Russian Defence Ministry said US jets had killed more than 60 Syrian soldiers in four air strikes by two F-16s and two A-10s coming from the direction of Iraq.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based monitoring group with contacts across Syria, cited a military source at Deir al-Zor airport as saying at least 80 Syrian soldiers had been killed.
The ceasefire, which took effect on Monday, is the most significant peacemaking effort in Syria for months, but has been undermined by repeated accusations of violations on both sides and by a failure to bring humanitarian aid to besieged areas.
Apart from the US and Russian involvement, Assad is supported by Iran and Arab Shi'ite militias, while Sunni rebels seeking to unseat him are backed by Turkey and Gulf Arab states.
All the warring parties are also sworn enemies of ISIS, whose territory extends along the Euphrates valley from the Iraqi border, including around Deir al-Zor, up to land near Syria's frontier with Turkey.
In its sixth year, the conflict has cost hundreds of thousands of lives, displaced half of Syria's pre-war population, prompted a refugee crisis in the Middle East and Europe and inspired a wave of jihadist attacks across the world.
Syria's army said the US-led strikes, which took place at around 5 pm local time (1400 GMT) were "conclusive evidence" of US support for ISIS, calling them "dangerous and blatant aggression".
The US military said in its statement that Syria was a "complex situation" but that "coalition forces would not intentionally strike a known Syrian military unit".
ISIS said via its Amaq news channel it had taken complete control of Jebel Tharda, where the bombed position was located, which would have allowed it to overlook government-held areas of Deir al-Zor.
The city's airport and some districts have been entirely surrounded by ISIS since last year, with the airport providing their only external access.
However, Russia and Syrian state media said the Syrian army later recaptured positions it had lost. The Observatory monitoring group said at least 20 ISIS fighters were killed in heavy Russian air strikes during that fighting.
The incident also threatens to undermine proposed joint targeting by the United States and Russia of Islamic State and some other jihadist groups across Syria.
Earlier on Saturday, Russia and Syrian rebels cast doubt over the prospects for the increasingly shaky ceasefire, with Moscow saying the situation was worsening and a senior insurgent warning that the truce "will not hold out".
While the ceasefire has reduced fighting, some violence has persisted across Syria. Meanwhile, there has been little movement on promised aid deliveries to besieged areas and both sides have accused the other of bad faith.
Russia's Defence Ministry said conditions in Syria were deteriorating, adding that it believed the ceasefire had been breached 199 times by rebels and saying the United States would be responsible if it were to collapse.
After the Deir al-Zor attack, it said Moscow had told the United States to rein in the Syrian opposition and make sure it did not launch a new offensive, adding that it had informed Washington about a concentration of rebels north of Hama.
Insurgents say they only reluctantly accepted the initial deal, which they believe is skewed against them, because it could relieve the dire humanitarian situation in besieged areas they control, and blamed Russia for undermining the truce.
"The truce, as we have warned, and we told the (US) State Department - will not hold out," a senior rebel official in Aleppo said, pointing to the continued presence of a UN aid convoy at the Turkish border awaiting permission to enter.
Rebels have also accused Russia of using the ceasefire to give the Syrian army and allied Shi'ite militias a chance to regroup and deploy forces ready for their own offensives.
Both sides have accused the other of being responsible for aid deliveries being stuck far from Aleppo, where army and rebel forces were supposed to pull back from the Castello Road which leads into besieged, insurgent-held eastern districts.
Russia on Friday said the Syrian army had initially withdrawn but returned to its positions after being fired on by rebels, who in turn say they saw no sign of government forces ever leaving their positions.
"There is no change," Zakariya Malahifji, an official for a rebel group in Aleppo, said on Saturday when asked whether there had been any move by the army to withdraw from positions along the road.
Syria's government said it was doing all that was necessary for the arrival of aid to those in need in all parts of the country, particularly eastern Aleppo.
"All the permissions the Syrian government was supposed to give have been given for humanitarian supplies to reach people in need in various parts of Syria and that the humanitarian convoy to eastern Aleppo is supposed to leave tomorrow morning," Churkin said.
Two convoys of aid for Aleppo have been waiting at the Turkish border for days. The UN has said both sides in the war are to blame for the delay of aid to Aleppo, where neither has yet withdrawn from the Castello Road.
The government said the road was being fired on by rebels, so it could not give convoys a guarantee of safety. The rebels deny the accusation.
Senior UN officials have accused the government of failing to provide letters to allow convoys to reach other besieged areas in Syria.
Syrian army regains areas lost to IS
AP
BEIRUT
Syria's state news agency is reporting that troops have regained control of areas they lost to the Islamic State group in the east of the country after an airstrike by the US-led coalition.
SANA quotes an unnamed military official as saying Sunday that dozens of IS fighters were killed in the offensive under the cover of Syrian airstrikes.
The Syrian military official said government troops had regained control of areas the extremists captured, "as a result of the American aircraft aggression."
The US military said it may have unintentionally struck Syrian troops while carrying out a raid against IS on Saturday.
Russia's military said it was told by the Syrian army that at least 62 soldiers were killed in the Deir el-Zour air raid and more than 100 wounded.
