Syrian truce holds amid air strikes and clashes

Regime war planes bombed south Aleppo countryside

BEIRUT // Syrian warplanes yesterday carried out several strikes, and low- key clashes persisted in some areas, but a ceasefire brokered by Russia and Turkey largely held in other areas on its third day, a monitoring group and rebels said.

Jets bombed the villages of Kafr Kar, Mintar and around the town of Banan in the southern Aleppo countryside, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. It said government forces also advanced overnight against rebels in the Eastern Ghouta area near Damascus, seizing 10 farms.

But opposition groups did not act on threats made on Saturday to abandon the truce, raising hopes for an end to about six years of fighting. A news outlet run by Hizbollah, a Lebanese militant group allied to Syrian president Bashar Al Assad, said the Syrian army had destroyed an armoured vehicle belonging to the Jabhat Fatah Al Sham rebel group in southern Aleppo province.

The army said that Jabhat Fatah Al Sham, formerly Al Qaeda’s Syria branch under the name of Jabhat Al Nusra, was not included in the ceasefire deal, but rebels said it was.

The latest truce agreement is the first not to involve the United States or the United Nations – a reflection of Moscow’s growing diplomatic influence after a long campaign of Russian air strikes helped Mr Al Assad to recapture the northern city of Aleppo last month. That victory has greatly strengthened his position as the warring sides prepare for peace talks in the Kazakh capital Astana this month. Mohammed Rasheed, a spokesman for the Jaish Al Nasr rebel group, which operates mostly in the western province of Hama, said the area was mostly calm. There were low-key clashes in Wadi Barada near Damascus but government forces and their allies had stopped carrying out air strikes and shelling, he said. The Hizbollah news outlet said that government forces were fighting against Jabhat Fatah Al Sham in that area during the night and had killed several militants.

The rebels warned on Saturday that they would abandon the truce if government breaches of the truce persisted, giving an 8pm (1800 GMT) deadline for attacks in Wadi Barada to stop. The shelling and air raids ceased by that time, rebels said.

In the coastal city of Tartus, two suicide attackers blew themselves up, killing two security officers who had stopped them shortly after midnight as residents were celebrating New Year’s Day, the Syrian state news agency Sana reported.

A news website close to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard said Gen Gholam Ali Gholizadeh, a veteran of the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, was killed in the fighting in Syria. It did not provide further details.

Iran is Mr Al Assad’s main ally along with Russia, although it routinely denies deploying its forces in Syria.

Two security officers in the coastal town of Tartus were killed yesterday when they stopped two suicide attackers shortly after midnight