A UN humanitarian group yesterday said it was frustrated by its inability to deliver badly needed aid to the divided Syrian city of Aleppo, amid growing fears of the collapse of a US-Russian truce that went into effect in Syria a few days ago.
“As of Saturday morning, there has been no progress, which is immensely frustrating for the humanitarian community on the ground,” said David Swanson, an official at the UN’s regional humanitarian affairs office for the Syria crisis. Dozens of trucks with UN relief supplies remain stuck on the Turkish border.
Around 80,000 people will benefit from this aid targeting besieged opposition-controlled districts in eastern Aleppo, Swanson said.
UN envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura has put most of blame on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, which has not provided any so-called facilitation letters for the aid trucks to cross front lines.
Aleppo, Syria’s pre-war commercial hub, has been divided between Assad’s forces in the west and rebels to the east since fighting erupted for the control of the city in mid-2012.
There have been increasing reports of breaches of the truce since it came into effect yesterday.
The US military said  yesterday the coalition forces had halted an air strike south of Deir-al-Zor, Syria,  after Russian officials said the targeted personnel and vehicles may have been part of the Syrian military.
The strike was in an area the coalition had attacked in the past, and coalition members had informed their Russian counterparts before it began, the US military’s Central Command said in a statement.
The statement was issued after Russia a said US-led coalition jets bombed a Syrian army position near Deir al-Zor airport yesterday, killing dozens of Syrian soldiers.
“Coalition forces believed they were striking a Da’esh (Islamic State) fighting position that they had been tracking for a significant amount of time before the strike,” Tampa, Florida-based Central Command said in its statement.
Central Command said Syria is a complex situation, with a variety of military forces and militias in close proximity, and that coalition forces would not intentionally strike a known Syrian military unit.
The coalition will review the strike and the circumstances surrounding it to see if any lessons can be learned, the statement said.