Syria violence kills 4, wounds child
Despite safe zones, casualties mount in war-torn country.
Violence left at BEIRUT — least four opposition fighters dead and a child wounded in central and southern Syria Saturday despite relative calm prevailing across the war-ravaged country after a deal to set up “de-escalation zones” in mostly opposition-held areas went into effect, opposition activists and government media outlets said.
The casualties were the first after the implementation of the agreement hammered out by Russia, Turkey and Iran — the latest attempt to bring calm to the country — commenced at midnight Friday.
The establishment of safe zones is the latest international attempt to reduce violence amid a six-year civil war that has left more than 400,000 dead, and is the first to envisage armed foreign monitors on the ground in Syria. The United States is not party to the agreement and the Syrian rivals have not signed on to the deal, saying it lacks legitimacy.
Details of the plan remain to be worked out. There were limited reports of bombing in northern Homs and Hama, and the southern province of Daraa, areas expected to be part of the “de-escalation zones,” activists said.
It is not clear how the cease-fire or “de-escalation zones” will be enforced in areas still to be determined in maps to emerge a month from now.
In the tangled mess that constitutes Syria’s battlefields, there is much that can go wrong with the plan, agreed on in talks Thursday in Kazakhstan.
Syria’s government has said that although it will abide by the agreement, it would continue fighting “terrorism” wherever it exists, parlance for most armed rebel groups fighting government troops. And the armed opposition delegation to the talks in the Kazakh capital of Astana said in a statement released early Saturday that the truce should include all Syria and not just specific areas.
Still, opposition activists in southern, central and northern Syria said the situation was more calm Saturday than previous days.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which has activists on the ground across the country, said government helicopter gunships dropped at least 10 barrel bombs on the rebel-held Latamneh area and its surroundings in central Syria where fighting was reported between rebels and troops. It added that government forces shelled rebel-held neighborhoods of the capital Damascus.
“Despite some violations the situation is much calmer than before,” said opposition activist Mohammed al-Homsi, speaking via Skype from northern Syria.
The U.S. military said in a statement that Gen. Joseph Dunford, the Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, spoke Saturday with General Valery Gerasimov, the Russian Federation Chief of General Staff about the agreement and affirmed their commitment to de-conflicting operations in Syria. Both also agreed to maintain regular contact, the statement said.
A previous cease-fire agreement that went into effect on Dec. 30 helped reduce overall violence in Syria for several weeks but eventually collapsed. Other attempts at a cease-fire in Syria have all ended in failure.