Syria ceasefire: US Secretary of State John Kerry battles to save truce

 Mr Kerry will meet with the foreign ministers of Jordan and Saudi Arabia and UN envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura, the State Department said in a statement.

The trip comes with a US and Russian-backed ceasefire under threat as air strikes and rocket attacks continue in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo.

The latest violence there contributed to the break up of peace talks in Geneva, which the main opposition walked out of last week.

Nearly 30 air strikes hit rebel-held areas of Aleppo on Saturday as a temporary “calm” declared by Syria’s military took effect around Damascus and in the north-west.

The Syrian army announced a “regime of calm”, or lull in fighting, late on Friday (local time), which Damascus said was designed to salvage the wider ceasefire.

But a number of rebel groups appeared to reject the “regime of calm”.

“We won’t accept any kind of … regional ceasefires,” said a statement from a number of groups including the hardline Islamist Jaysh al-Islam, which controls areas east of Damascus.

It said the main armed opposition as a whole reserved the right to respond to attacks on rebel factions in any part of the country, and criticised the United States for not doing enough to stop government bombardments.

The lull in fighting around the capital and parts of north-west coastal province Latakia, announced by the army, appeared to hold through most of Saturday but the bombing continued in Aleppo which was excluded from the plan.

Anas Al Abde, president of the Turkey-based opposition Syrian National Coalition, accused the government of violating the February truce “daily”.

The opposition was ready to reinstate the wider truce, but reserved the right to respond with force to attacks, he said.

All sides have accused each other of truce violations.

Aleppo, Syria’s largest city before the war, has been divided for years between rebel and Government-held zones.

Of the 250 casualties since April 22, 140 were killed in bombardments by government-aligned forces and 96 by rebel shelling.

Forty children were among the dead, according to a tally by the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Stopping Aleppo bloodshed ‘top priority’

The US is working on “specific initiatives” to reduce the violence in Syria and sees stopping the bloodshed in Aleppo as a top priority, a State Department spokesman said.

In a statement detailing calls Mr Kerry has made over the past two days with UN Special Envoy Staffan de Mistura and with Riyad Hijab, a negotiator for Syrian opposition groups, State Department spokesman John Kirby said Mr Kerry had made clear the US wanted Russia to apply pressure to the Assad Government to get it to stop “indiscriminate aerial attacks” in Aleppo.

“In both calls, the secretary underscored that the initial efforts to reaffirm the cessation of hostilities in Latakia and Eastern Ghouta are not limited to these two areas and that efforts to renew the cessation must and do include Aleppo,” Mr Kirby said.

The United Nations has called on Moscow and Washington to help restore the ceasefire to prevent the complete collapse of talks aimed at ending the five-year conflict in which more than 250,000 people have been killed and millions displaced.

Agencies have continued to deliver aid in the west of the country, but say that access is not regular enough and that many Syrians in need still cannot be reached.

The International Committee for the Red Cross said aid had begun to enter the towns of Zabadani and Madaya, where there were reports of starvation earlier this year due to a siege by government forces and their allies.

Trucks simultaneously entered al-Foua and Kefraya in the northwest province of Idlib, which are surrounded by insurgents.