4th Syria safe zone eyed
Aid money missing
ASTANA, Kazakhstan, Sept 14, (Agencies): Russia’s envoy for Syria said Thursday that an agreement was “very close” on a fourth safe zone in the country as a new round of talks began in Kazakhstan on ending the six-year war.
Speaking after negotiations involving regime backers Russia and Iran as well as rebel-supporting Turkey, Alexander Lavrentyev expressed confidence that deals for zones in four parts of the country would be finalised on Friday.
“We are very close to signing an agreement on all these four de-escalation zones,” he told journalists in the capital Astana.
The two-day talks are the sixth round of negotiations Moscow has spearheaded this year as it seeks to pacify Syria after its game-changing intervention on the side of leader Bashar alAssad.
The negotiators are looking to nail down details of a proposed “de-escalation” zone in the northern Idlib province, after Moscow ploughed on with setting up three other safe areas around the country in a move that has seen violence drop.
There are still major disagreements over which force will be sent to police the zone covering rebel-held Idlib — on Syria’s northern border with Turkey — as Ankara and Tehran jockey for influence.
Russia has so far deployed military police to patrol the boundaries of three zones agreed in the south, in Eastern Ghouta near Damascus, and in part of the central Homs province.
Idlib is the only province in Syria that remains entirely beyond regime control after having been captured in 2015 by an alliance of jihadists and rebels.
The talks were also attended by representatives of the Syrian regime and opposition, the United Nations and observers from the United States and Jordan.
More than 330,000 people are estimated to have been killed in the Syrian war that began in 2011 as anti-government protests and millions have been displaced.
Separate suspected Russian and US-led coalition strikes on Syria’s Deir Ezzor province killed at least 39 civilians on Thursday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor said.
The strikes hit several parts of the eastern province, where parallel Russian and US-backed ground offensives are under way against the Islamic State group.
The Britain-based monitor said seven children were among the dead in the strikes, which hit multiple parts of the province including the city of Mayadeen, a remaining IS stronghold.
The strikes come as Syria’s army battles to oust IS from the provincial capital Deir Ezzor city, after breaking the jihadist group’s two-year siege of government-held parts of the metropolis.
Backed by Russian air strikes, the army and allied fighters
now hold over half the city, and are working to surround IS militants in the remaining parts.
On Thursday, the Observatory said the army seized the northern suburb of Al-Boghaliya, advancing to the adjacent western bank of the Euphrates river that slices diagonally across Deir Ezzor province.
They are still battling to take additional territory in the southern part of the city in order to encircle IS fighters.
On the opposite side of the river, the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, an alliance of Syrian Kurdish and Arab fighters, is also battling IS.
US-led and Russian strikes in support of the separate campaigns have killed dozens of civilians in recent days, including some fleeing the fighting and seeking shelter in tents along the banks of the Euphrates, according to the Observatory.
More than 330,000 people have been killed in Syria since the conflict began in March 2011 with anti-government protests before spiralling into a bloody civil war.