Truce takes hold in Aleppo but fighting rages nearby

AMMAN — A cessation of hostilities brokered by Russia and the United States brought a measure of relief to Aleppo on Thursday, but fighting raged nearby and President Bashar Assad said he still sought total victory over rebels in Syria.

Syrian state media said the army would abide by a "regime of calm" in the city that came into effect at 1am (2200 GMT on Wednesday) for 48 hours, and relative calm prevailed on Thursday after two weeks of death and destruction.

The army blamed insurgents for violating the agreement overnight by what it called indiscriminate shelling of some government-held residential areas of divided Aleppo. Residents said the violence had eased by morning and more shops had opened up.

Heavy fighting was reported in the southern Aleppo countryside near the town of Khan Touman, where Al Qaeda's Syrian branch Al Nusra Front is dug in close to a stronghold of Iranian-backed militias, a rebel source said.

Government forces carried out air attacks on the area and rebels were attacking government positions around the town, pro-Syrian government television channel Al Mayadeen and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Pro-opposition media said an insurgent carried out a suicide bomb attack against government positions in Khan Touman.

A TV station controlled by the Lebanese group Hizbollah, which is fighting alongside the Syrian army, said the army used a guided missile to destroy a suicide car bomb before it reached its target in that area.

Elsewhere in Syria, fighting persisted. Daesh militants captured the Shaer gas field in the east of the country, the first gain for the extremists in the Palmyra desert area since they lost the ancient city in March, according to rebel sources and a monitor.

Amaq, a Daesh-affiliated news agency, said Daesh militants killed at least 30 Syrian troops stationed at Shaer and seized heavy weapons, tanks and missiles.

Russian war jets were also reported to have struck militant hideouts in the town of Sukhna in the same Palmyra desert area.

‘Final victory’

Assad said he would accept nothing less than an outright victory in the five-year-old conflict against rebels across Syria, state media reported.

In a telegram to Russian President Vladimir Putin thanking Moscow for its military support, Assad said the army was set on “attaining final victory” and “crushing the aggression”.

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least one person was killed overnight in rebel shelling of the Midan neighbourhood on the government-held side of Aleppo, which was Syria’s commercial hub and largest city before the war.

Rockets also hit the New Aleppo district, state media said.

But a resident of the rebel-held eastern part of the city said that although warplanes flew overnight, there were none of the intense raids seen during the past 10 days of air strikes.

People in several districts ventured onto the streets where more shops than normal had opened, the resident of Al Shaar neighbourhood said.

Another resident said civilians in several districts sensed a general trend towards calm. “From last night it was positive and my wife went out to shop, and shops opened and people breathed. We did not hear the shelling and bombing we had gotten accustomed to,” Sameh Tutunji, a merchant said.

A rebel source also said that despite intermittent firing across the city’s main front lines, fighting had subsided and no army shelling of residential areas had been heard.

“Although we’re seeing less fighting today, the massive onslaught of violence over these past two weeks would make almost anything look like improvement,” the North Syria Director for aid organisation Mercy Corps Xavier Tissier said.

“We aren’t going to celebrate a temporary break in targeted attacks on civilians and aid workers. The cessation of hostilities must hold for the long term,” Tissier said.

Rebels also said government helicopters dropped barrel bombs on rebel-held Dahyat Al Rashdeen Al Junobi, northwest of Aleppo, and near the Jamiyat Al Zahraa area, which saw a rebel ground assault pushed back on Wednesday.

The recent surge in bloodshed in Aleppo had wrecked a February cessation of hostilities agreement sponsored by Washington and Moscow, backers of the rival sides. The truce excluded Daesh and Al Nusra Front.

A spokesman for the mainstream opposition said the Saudi-based High Negotiations Committee supported the deal but wanted the truce to cover all of Syria, not just Aleppo. It accused the government of violating it.