Tag Archives: Syria

Syria air strikes target Islamic State in ancient Palmyra

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Russian warplanes were said to have launched heavy strikes on the Islamic State-held city of Palmyra on Thursday in what may be a prelude to a Syrian government bid to recapture the historic site lost to the jihadist group last May.

Dozens of Islamic State fighters were killed or wounded in the strikes that followed similarly heavy air raids in the Palmyra area on Wednesday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group reported.

The attacks add to the pressure on a group that is losing ground to a separate, U.S.-backed campaign by Syrian militia in the northeast, and whose military commander was declared probably dead by U.S. officials on Tuesday.

The group’s tactics in Syria appear to reflect the strains, as it turns to suicide missions seemingly aimed at causing maximum casualties rather than sustainable territorial gains.

Islamic State is not included in a cessation of hostilities agreement that has brought about a lull in the war raging in western Syria between rebels aiming to topple President Bashar al-Assad and the Syrian army backed by the Russian air force.

Military operations against Islamic State in central and eastern Syria are continuing as both Damascus and its allies on one hand, and the United States and its allies on the other, seek to degrade Islamic State’s self-declared “caliphate” that stretches into Iraq.

The Observatory said Russian war planes carried out 150 raids in the Palmyra area on Wednesday, followed by further attacks on Thursday. “If they take Tadmur (Palmyra) and Qarayatain, the regime would have taken back a big geographic area of Syria,” said Observatory Director Rami Abdulrahman.

The loss of Qaraytain and Palmyra and the surrounding desert would reduce Islamic State’s hold to about 20 percent of Syria.

Qarayatain is 60 miles southwest of Palmyra. After capturing Palmyra, Islamic State blew up some of its ancient monuments in what the U.N. cultural agency UNESCO called a war crime.

Islamic State however appears well-entrenched in Palmyra, and while recovering the city would be a big boost for Damascus, its priority may be elsewhere for now, including the border with Turkey where it has been fighting rebels despite the truce.

FINANCES UNDER STRAIN

The momentum has turned against Islamic State since its rapid advances two years ago following the capture of the Iraqi city of Mosul. Its finances are also under strain, with fighters’ pay cut by up to a half.

In what would be another major blow to Islamic State, U.S. officials said on Tuesday that its “minister of war”, Abu Omar al-Shishani, was likely killed in a U.S. air strike near the town of al-Shadadi in northeastern Syria.

The militant, also known as Omar the Chechen, had a reputation as a close military adviser to Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

The Pentagon believes Shishani was sent to bolster Islamic State troops after they suffered setbacks at the hands of U.S.-allied militias including the Kurdish YPG.

The Observatory, which says it gathers its information from sources on all sides of the war, said on Thursday that Shishani was badly wounded but still alive and being treated somewhere in the group’s Syrian stronghold of Raqqa province.

Recent Islamic State attacks have included suicide car bombings in the government-held cities of Damascus and Homs, and a determined but ultimately unsuccessful effort to sever the government’s only land supply route to Aleppo.

Dozens of its fighters were also killed in a Feb. 27 attack on the YPG-held town of Tel Abyad at the Turkish border. A YPG official sent Reuters a list of the names of 72 IS fighters he said had been sent there on a suicide mission.

The official said Shishani’s death, if true, would not be that significant because Islamic State “is being broken by the YPG and Syria Democratic Forces with or without him”. “It doesn’t change the equation at all as far as we are concerned.”

(Additional reporting by Omar Fahmy in Cairo; editing by Giles Elgood)

Syria opposition sees fewer truce breaches, U.N. prepares talks

BEIRUT/GENEVA (Reuters) – The Syrian opposition said on Wednesday there had been fewer breaches of a truce agreement by the government and its allies in the past day as a U.N. envoy unveiled plans to resume peace talks next week.

The “cessation of hostilities agreement” brokered by the United States and Russia has slowed the war considerably despite accusations of violations on all sides, preparing the ground for talks which the United Nations plans to convene in Geneva.

The talks will coincide with the fifth anniversary of a conflict that began with protests against President Bashar al-Assad before descending into a multi-sided war that has drawn in foreign governments and allowed the growth of Islamic State.

U.N. envoy Staffan de Mistura said he planned to launch substantive peace talks on Monday, focusing on issues of Syria’s future governance, elections within 18 months, and a new constitution.

While the opposition High Negotiations Committee (HNC) has yet to declare whether it will attend, spokesman Salem al-Muslat said it was positive that the talks would “start … with discussion of the matter of political transition”.

He said the HNC would announce its decision very soon.

The Syrian government, its position strengthened by more than five months of Russian air strikes, has also yet to say whether it will attend. There was no immediate response from Damascus to de Mistura’s remarks. The Syrian foreign minister is due to give a news conference on Saturday at noon.

Peace talks convened in Geneva two years ago collapsed as the sides’ were unable to agree an agenda: Damascus wanted a focus on fighting terrorism – the term it uses for the rebellion – while the opposition wanted talks on transitional government.

TALKS ABORTED

De Mistura aborted a previous attempt to hold talks on Feb. 3 and urged countries in the International Syria Support Group, led by the United States and Russia, to do more preparatory work.

The result was the cessation of hostilities which Western governments say has largely held since it came into effect on Feb. 27. It has been accompanied by more aid deliveries to opposition areas besieged by government forces, though fighting has continued in some important areas of northwestern Syria.

Rebel groups fighting to topple Assad had initially said they would support a two-week halt to the fighting. De Mistura said on Wednesday however that it was an “open-ended concept”.

The next round of talks would not run beyond March 24. There would then be a break of a week or 10 days before resuming.

Asked if the talks could be delayed further from an original start date of March 7, de Mistura said the format gave him a lot of flexibility.

Jan Egeland, who chairs the Syria humanitarian task force, said the United Nations had delivered aid to 10 of 18 besieged areas across the country in the last four weeks, and was working to overcome obstacles and reach remaining areas.

The truce agreement, accepted by Assad’s government and many of his enemies, was the first of its kind in a war that has killed more than 250,000 people and caused a major refugee crisis.

The agreement has not been directly signed by the warring parties and is less binding than a formal ceasefire. It does not cover Islamic State or the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front, whose fighters are deployed in western Syria in close proximity to rebel groups that have agreed to cease fire.

Russia says it has recorded opposition violations including supplies of weapons via Turkey to rebels in Syria.

FEWER VIOLATIONS

Muslat of the HNC said: “The violations of the truce were great at the start, but yesterday they were much fewer. There are perhaps some positive matters that we are seeing.”

Speaking to Reuters, he said a government blockade of the Damascus suburb of Daraya must be lifted in order to “pave the way to the start of negotiations”. He added this was not a condition for the attending talks but a humanitarian requirement.

Despite the relative success of the cessation of hostilities, the peace talks face great challenges, including the question of Assad’s future.

The opposition says Assad must be removed from power at the start of a transition, while some of his Western enemies have backed away from that position, saying he must go at some point.

Russia has said that the matter should not be predetermined and Syrians should be left to choose. Assad has meanwhile ruled out anything that contravene the constitution, including the idea of a transitional governing body sought by the opposition.

Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-JubeIr reiterated his government’s tough line on Assad, who has also been boosted by Iranian military support. Saudi Arabia, which is in conflict with Iran across the region, has been a major sponsor of the Syrian insurgency.

“The choice for Bashar al-Assad is to either leave through a political process or the Syrian people will continue to fight until militarily they oust him,” Jubeir said.

(Additional reporting by Lisa Barrington in Beirut and Stephanie Nebehay in Geneval; Writing by Tom Perry; Editing by Giles Elgood)

Europe’s deal with Turkey fails to deter migrant attempts for now

DIDIM, Turkey (Reuters) – Turkey’s coastguard intercepted dozens of mostly Syrian migrants in coves along the Aegean coast on Wednesday as they continued to attempt perilous sea crossings to Greece despite Ankara’s efforts to stem the flow under a deal with the European Union.

A group of 42 people, more than a dozen of them children, sat inside a coastguard compound, some lying under blankets, in the seaside resort of Didim after being detained. Scores more waited among boulders by the beach, watched by armed police, as a bus came to take them away.

“We’re afraid of staying here and afraid of staying in Syria … We’re fleeing to the country that will take us. We want safety, someone to care for us,” said Sameeha Abdullah, one of the group near the beach, who fled Syria’s civil war.

Just offshore, a coastguard boat approached what appeared to be a small vessel carrying more migrants. Some officials fear a scramble to cross to the nearby Greek islands, despite increased NATO-backed sea patrols in the Aegean, before the tentative agreement with the EU comes into full force.

Under the draft deal struck on Monday, Turkey agreed to take back all irregular migrants in exchange for more funding, an earlier introduction of visa-free travel to Europe for Turks, and a speeding up of Ankara’s long-stalled EU membership talks.

The aim, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and EU leaders have said, is to discourage illegal migrants and break the business model of human smugglers who have fueled Europe’s largest migration crisis since World War Two. The message, they say, is simple: try to cross illegally and get sent straight back.

But in a shabby sea-front hotel in Didim, off whose coast 25 migrants drowned on Sunday when their boat capsized, few had heard of the deal. A group of migrants from the Iraqi city of Mosul, stuck because they could not afford to pay the smugglers, said they were still determined to leave.

“Even if they catch me, what am I going to do here? I may as well die trying,” said Hussein, 45, who said his three sons were killed by Islamic State militants in Iraq.

The hotelier, who gave his name as Enes, said a group of 20 Syrians, whom he collectively charged 500 lira ($170) for the night, had left yesterday for Europe. But he was sure more would come.

“Even if Europe gave Turkey hundreds of billions for refugees, Syrians still wouldn’t stay. Most of their family is there so they’re joining them,” he said.

LEGALITY QUESTIONED

Turkey has no intention of sending refugees back to conflict zones and sees no legal hurdles to implementing the deal, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Wednesday, after meetings with Belgian officials in Ankara.

EU and Turkish officials are scrambling to finalize the deal before their next summit on March 17-18, and Cavusoglu said the bloc had largely accepted Turkey’s terms.

But the United Nations and human rights groups have warned that blanket returns without considering individual asylum cases could be illegal. And it remains far from clear that the message will get through to desperate families who see smuggling as their surest route into Europe as its borders close.

Even as groups of migrants were detained on the beaches, more arrived by taxi in Didim, a popular holiday resort with yachts bobbing in its marina. Some carried bags, children in tow, and headed for the town’s small hotels, which like in other parts of the Aegean coast, have been profiting from migrant business in the tourism low season.

“The markets, the hotels, the restaurants – everyone was smiling. Because of the refugees we eat bread,” said the manager of one hostel. The hostel is in Basmane, a run-down neighborhood of Izmir, the main city on the Turkish Aegean coast and long a stopover for migrants trying to reach Europe during the Iraq wars and Arab Spring uprisings.

NEW GROUPS ARRIVING

More than a million people fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and beyond have flooded into the EU since early 2015, most crossing the Aegean from Turkey to Greece in small boats, then heading north through the Balkans to Germany.

Border shutdowns further north have blocked the ‘Balkans corridor’, leaving tens of thousands of migrants trapped in Greece. Macedonia has closed its border to illegal migrants after Slovenia, Croatia and Serbia announced tight new restrictions on migrant entry.

Rights group Amnesty International called the proposed mass return of migrants under the EU deal with Turkey a “death blow to the right to seek asylum”. Relief charity Doctors without Borders said it was cynical and inhumane.

But Davutoglu insisted the preliminary deal would not stop Syrian refugees legitimately seeking shelter in Europe. He and Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras signed an amendment to the countries’ readmission agreement late on Tuesday to make returning third country nationals easier.

“The aim here is to discourage irregular migration and … to recognize those Syrians in our camps who the EU will accept – though we will not force anyone to go against their will – on legal routes,” he said after a meeting with Tsipras in Izmir.

Under the tentative deal with Ankara, the EU would admit one refugee directly from Turkey for each Syrian it took back from the Greek Aegean islands. Those who attempted the sea route illegally would be returned and go to the back of the queue.

With new groups of migrants from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere continuing to arrive along Turkey’s coast in the hope of crossing to Greece, that message appears for now not to be getting through, to the frustration of some local residents.

“Whatever’s necessary should be done. The refugees should be gathered in one spot in my opinion. Everything should be done to ensure everyone’s comfort, peace and welfare,” said Armagan Gulcicek, an Izmir resident in a street full of cafes and stores popular with migrants, some of them selling life jackets.

“Let’s put an end to this nonsense.”

(Additional reporting by Umit Bektas and Mehmet Emin Caliskan in Didim, Kole Casule in Skopje; Writing by Nick Tattersall; editing by David Stamp)

Islamic State’s de facto ‘minister of war’ possibly killed, U.S. officials say

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A red-bearded Islamic State commander described by American officials as the group’s de facto minister of war may have been killed in an air strike in Syria on Friday by the U.S.-led coalition, several U.S. officials said on Tuesday.

Abu Omar al-Shishani, also known as Omar the Chechen, ranked among the most wanted militants under a U.S. reward program that offered up to $5 million for information to help remove him from the battlefield.

Born in 1986 in Georgia, which was then still part of the Soviet Union, Shishani had a reputation as a close military adviser to Islamic State’s leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who was said by followers to have relied heavily on Shishani.

He may have been killed during a coalition strike on March 4 near the town of al-Shadadi, which U.S.-backed forces from the Syrian Arab Coalition captured from the Islamic State last month.

Two U.S. officials expressed optimism about the strike but acknowledged that a determination about Shishani’s fate was not certain and that the results of the operation still were being reviewed. A third official limited himself to saying Shishani was targeted in the strike.

The U.S. State Department described Shishani as a senior Islamic State commander and Shura Council member based in al-Raqqa, the Islamic State’s de facto capital in Syria.

It said he was identified as the Islamic State’s military commander in a video distributed by the group in 2014.

Shishani, whose name was originally Tarkhan Tayumurazovich Batirashvili, oversaw a prison facility near Raqqa where Islamic State possibly held foreign hostages.

(Additional reporting by Jonathan Landay; Editing by Bill Trott)

Water service restored to 2 million Syrians after 48-day shutdown

Millions of people living in and around the Syrian city of Aleppo were without a source of clean water for 48 days before a key facility came back online last week, UNICEF announced Sunday.

The al-Khafseh treatment plant resumed taking and treating water from the Euphrates River last Thursday, the United Nations children’s organization said in a news release, marking the first time the plant had done so since it was “deliberately” closed on January 16.

UNICEF did not assign blame for the roughly month-and-a-half shutdown, which left about 2 million people in or near Aleppo without their only means of accessing clean drinking water.

Rather, the organization noted the incident was the latest in a line of troubling attacks on water supplies across Syria, saying “all sides” involved in the nearly five-year conflict have used water as “a weapon of war” to deprive civilians of the clean water that is necessary for everyday life.

UNICEF said about 5 million people in Syria faced water shortages that could have killed them last year, as various combatants either shut off water, targeted facilities with airstrikes or ground attacks or prevented civilians from doing the work required to repair and operate the systems.

The organization said civilians sometimes turned to untreated water sources, which left them prone to contracting waterborne illnesses. That was the case in Aleppo, where people were forced to rely on groundwater. About half of them were children, who were particularly at risk.

However, this wasn’t the first time that Aleppo’s water supply — or the plant — was offline.

According to UNICEF, about 2 million people were temporarily without water after an airstrike hit the plant last November. That came months after a summer that saw “opposition groups” turn off the water more than 40 times, affecting 1.5 million people. One outage lasted two weeks.

Damascus, Dar’a and Salamiyah have also seen disruptions in their water service, UNICEF said.

In a statement, UNICEF Representative in Syria Hanaa Singer said the al-Khafseh development was “lifesaving” and called for more to be done to ensure Syrians can always access safe water.

“Parties to the conflict must stop attacking or deliberately interrupting water supply, which is indispensable for the survival of the population. They should protect the treatment, distribution systems, pipelines and personnel who repair water installations,” Singer said. “Syria’s children and their families have a right to safe drinking water and clean water for hygiene and health.”

United Nations agencies say more than 250,000 people have been killed since the Syrian conflict began in 2011. Another 12 million are displaced, 4.8 million of whom are refugees.

Air strike hits Syrian market, opposition says truce must be respected

BEIRUT/GENEVA (Reuters) – A Syrian or Russian air strike was reported to have killed at least a dozen people and possibly many more at a market in northwestern Syria on Monday, straining a cessation of hostilities agreement meant to pave the way for peace talks.

In a further upsurge in violence, al Qaeda’s Nusra Front and other Islamist insurgents not included in the U.S.-Russian agreement attacked government forces in a neighboring province, a monitoring group said.

The agreement, accepted by President Bashar al-Assad’s government and most of his enemies, has reduced violence in Syria since it took effect on Feb 27, the first truce of its kind in a 5-year-old war that has killed more than 250,000 people and caused the world’s worst refugee crisis.

Foreign powers hope the pause in fighting can lead to peace talks to end the conflict. But the agreement, which has not been directly signed by the Syrian warring parties and is less binding than a formal ceasefire, is very fragile and each side has accused the other of breaking it.

Damascus and Moscow have vowed to continue fighting groups outside the agreement such as Islamic State and the Nusra Front, which is widely deployed across western Syria in close proximity to groups that agreed to cease fire. Many rebels say they believe the government and its Russian allies can use the presence of the militants as an excuse to fight on.

The death toll from the air strike on a market selling diesel in rebel-held Idlib province was likely to rise, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said, adding that it did not know whether the Syrian government or its Russian ally was responsible.

Riad Hijab, chairman of the opposition High Negotiations Committee (HNC), said “tens” of people had been killed in what he described as a massacre. There was no word from the Syrian government, which has said it is respecting the agreement.

Hijab said the opposition would decide by the end of the week whether to attend the talks, which the United Nations aims to start this week. Another HNC member told Reuters it was leaning toward going.

The Nusra Front and the Islamist Jund al-Aqsa attacked government forces near the village of al-Ais in the southern Aleppo countryside on Monday and gained some ground in subsequent clashes, the Britain-based Observatory said.

The agreement has been followed by more aid deliveries to opposition-held areas blockaded by the government, though the opposition says the quantities fall far short of the needs.

DISPUTED MAP

Rebels have said government forces, their war effort buoyed by five months of Russian air strikes, appear to be mobilizing forces. Opposition fighters say there have been numerous government attacks on their positions during the cessation, notably in northwestern Syria near the border with Turkey.

Russia has meanwhile said weapons are being supplied daily to rebels from Turkey, a major foreign sponsor of the rebellion.

Russia’s Defence Ministry said on Monday eight ceasefire violations had been registered in Syria over the past 24 hours.

The Syrian army has said very little about operations in western areas of Syria covered by the agreement, though it has said operations against Nusra continue.

The town struck in Monday’s air strike is close to an air base which Nusra Front and other groups captured last September. Government forces also shelled the rebel-held town of Jisr al-Shughour in Idlib province, the Observatory said.

Hijab, speaking in a conference call with reporters, said he had sent a letter to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to complain about a map of armed groups’ positions, which was published by the Russian Defence Ministry. He said the map was not accurate.

In a separate incident, the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia said the death toll from insurgent attacks on a mainly YPG-controlled residential quarter of northern city Aleppo on Sunday had risen to 16, including nine children.

The Observatory said it was the biggest single toll since the agreement came into effect.

The YPG said later on Monday insurgents from the Failaq al-Sham Islamist group had “infiltrated” near a village near the YPG-controlled city of Afrin in northwestern Aleppo province and fired at residents.

The YPG, which works with the United States but is considered hostile by U.S. ally Turkey, has for months been battling insurgents that receive support through Turkey in Aleppo city and in the north of the province.

GOVERNING AUTHORITY

Western states have said the cessation of hostilities appears to be largely holding, hoping that will allow for peace talks to get underway. A previous attempt to convene talks was aborted in February before any face-to-face meetings took place.

The obstacles to talks remain formidable, including differences over the future of Assad. The opposition wants Assad removed from power at the start of a transitional period, a demand Western countries have backed away from as Russia’s military intervention has reshaped the war in his favor.

HNC member Riad Nassan Agha said a final decision on attending the Geneva talks would depend on issues including the degree of compliance with the truce and progress toward easing humanitarian conditions.

But noting what he described as a reduction in ceasefire violations by the government side in the last two days, Agha said “our inclination is to go” and said he expected opposition delegates to start arriving on Friday.

He added that truce violations must be reduced to “zero” and that nothing else must happen to obstruct the start of talks.

“We will go, God willing,” he said.

The agenda must focus on the “formation of a transitional governing authority” in line with a U.N. Security Council resolution, he said, adding: “We will not accept getting into issues outside what the resolution sets out”.

(Additional reporting by John Davision; Editing by Dominic Evans, Philippa Fletcher and Peter Graff)

Spanish officials seize 20K military uniforms from alleged ISIS suppliers

Police in Spain have neutralized a “very active and effective business network” that allegedly supplied a variety of materials to terrorist groups, the country’s interior ministry said Thursday.

A counterterrorism investigation last month led to the arrest of seven people who are accused of providing “logistical and financial support” to the Islamic State and the Syrian al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra, the ministry announced in a news release. Authorities also confiscated about 20,000 uniforms and other accessories that could have been used “to equip an army that would be perfectly prepared for combat” out of three shipping containers in Valencia and Algeciras.

The ministry said the containers were tied to the business network, and had been labeled as carrying “second-hand clothes” so as not to arouse suspicion from customs officials. However, authorities discovered bundles of uniforms hidden among other clothing inside the containers.

The now-neutralized network helped provide a constant supply of weapons, military equipment and other technological supplies to areas controlled by the Islamic State, the ministry said.

Syria opposition says government mobilizes, casts doubt on talks

BEIRUT/PARIS/LONDON (Reuters) – The Syrian opposition said on Friday the government was mobilizing forces on many fronts despite an agreement to cease hostilities, and cast doubt on whether peace talks planned for next week would take place.

As rockets fired by government forces were reported to hit near the rebel-held town of Jisr al-Shughour in Idlib province, an influential rebel group said there could be no ceasefire while attacks continue.

An unprecedented U.S.-Russian agreement that came into effect on Saturday has slowed the pace of the 5-year-old war, but rebels fighting President Bashar al-Assad say the government has kept up attacks on strategically important frontlines.

The opposition has yet to say whether it will attend peace talks planned for March 9. Opposition coordinator Riad Hijab said the conditions for talks were “not favorable” but it was too early to say whether they would happen or not.

Assad, his war effort buoyed by five months of Russian air strikes, has said the army is respecting the agreement. The truce does not cover the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front or Islamic State, two groups which Moscow and Damascus have said they will continue to fight.

The Nusra Front is widely deployed across western Syria in close proximity to groups that agreed to cease fire, many of which say they believe the government and its Russian allies can use the presence of the militants as an excuse to fight on. Syrian state media have said very little about operations in western Syria since Saturday.

The Syrian opposition appears at odds with its Western backers over the success of the truce so far.

European leaders told Russian President Vladimir Putin they welcomed the fact the fragile truce appeared to be holding, and it should be used to try to secure peace without Assad.

But Hijab said government forces had attacked more than 50 opposition-held areas where groups that approved the truce were based.

Mohamad Alloush, a senior official in one of the largest rebel groups, Jaish al-Islam, told Reuters the government was mobilizing forces to “occupy very important strategic areas”. His group, in a separate statement, said the war had not stopped as far as it was concerned, and that a ceasefire was not possible while “militias and states kill our people”.

The head of another rebel group, who asked not to be identified for security reasons, said 40 army vehicles loaded with weaponry were seen heading northwards on Thursday night.

Government operations were “focused on Homs, on the coast mostly”, while Aleppo – the target of a major government offensive a month ago – was relatively calm, he said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based organization that tracks the conflict, said heavy shelling and rocket fire landed around the town of Ghasaniya near rebel-held Jisr al-Shughour on Friday.

It also said warplanes on Friday mounted the first air strike against the rebel-held town of Douma near Damascus since the start of the cessation. It did not say whether the planes were Russian or belonged to the Syrian army.

“THE WAR HAS NOT STOPPED”

The U.S. and Russian sponsored cessation of hostilities agreement, which has not been signed directly by the Syrian warring parties and is less binding than a formal ceasefire, is the first of its kind during a conflict that has killed more than 250,000 people.

U.N. Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura said on Thursday the agreement was holding but remained fragile and incidents had been contained. The U.S. State Department said on Thursday there had been no significant violations in the preceding 24 hours.

Assad said earlier this week that the militants had breached the deal from the first day and the army was refraining from responding to give the deal a chance.

Much of southern Syria, including areas near the border with Jordan, has been calm, though a rebel spokesman said government forces were also mobilizing there. “If the truce ends, the regime is ready to attack in a number of areas,” said Abu Ghiath al-Shami of the Alwiyat Seif al-Sham group.

The government, backed by Russian air power and fighters from Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, made significant territorial gains against rebels since the new year, focused in areas of western Syria near the borders with Turkey and Jordan.

De Mistura attempted to hold peace talks a month ago but these failed before they had even started in earnest.

France, Britain and Germany called on the opposition to attend the talks, but warned that the negotiations would succeed only if humanitarian access were granted and the truce respected.

“If these two conditions are not met, then the negotiation process is bound to fail, which we do not want,” French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault told journalists in Paris.

RUSSIA SAYS COMMITTED TO CEASEFIRE

The opposition council, known as the High Negotiations Committee, has said humanitarian demands previously listed as conditions for peace talks have still not been met. These include free access for humanitarian aid to opposition-held areas blockaded by government forces and a release of detainees.

Alloush, the senior Jaish al-Islam official, told Reuters aid delivered in recent days to opposition-held areas “is not enough to meet 10 percent of the needs, and nothing has entered most of the areas”.

In a conference call between the leaders of Germany, France, Britain, Italy and Russia, Putin confirmed Russia’s commitment to the ceasefire, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said.

Western countries want Assad to leave power, and the main opposition council says he should leave before any political transition starts. Russia has stood by him, while saying only Syrians should decide his fate.

In an interview with France 24, U.N. envoy de Mistura also said it was up to Syrians to decide: “Why should we be saying in advance what should the Syrians say, as long as they have the freedom and the opportunity of saying so?”

A spokeswoman for British Prime Minister David Cameron said the European leaders told Putin the truce must be used to try to secure peace without Assad, but their main point on the phone call was to welcome the fact the truce appeared to be holding.

The Kremlin said the leaders agreed that the cessation of hostilities had started yielding its first positive results.

“The importance of continued uncompromising fight against Islamic State, the Nusra Front and other terrorist groups” was stressed during the conversation, it said.

Hijab reiterated opposition complaints that the United States had made many concessions to Russia, including on the cessation of hostilities agreement.

“This is unfortunately at the expense of the Syrian revolution,” he said.

(Additional reporting by Mariam Karouny in Beirut, Maria Sheahan, Thierry Chiarello, John Irish and Andrew Callus in Paris, Elizabeth Piper in London, and Lidia Kelly in Moscow; writing by Tom Perry; editing by Peter Graff)

Electricity supply gradually returns in Syria after massive outage

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Syria’s electricity supply was gradually returning after it was cut across the country on Thursday and Internet connections were briefly disrupted, state media said.

SANA news agency quoted the electricity minister saying that the network was returning and would be restored to its earlier capacity by midnight. It did not say what caused the cut.

It said earlier that the “electricity work has been cut in all governorates. Attempts to find the cause of the outage have begun.”

A Reuters witness confirmed that electricity had gone down in Damascus, and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the five-year-old conflict in Syria, said that power had been cut in the “vast majority of governorates”.

SANA reported the Syria Telecommunications Company as saying Internet services were partially halted on Thursday “as a result of sudden damage to one of the network hubs”, but were later restored.

(Reporting by Lisa Barrington/Mariam Karouny; Editing by Dominic Evans)

White House hesitant to call Islamic State’s actions genocide

The White House does not believe the Islamic State’s actions against Christians in the Middle East have risen to the level of genocide, a spokesman told reporters in Washington this week.

Speaking at a press briefing on Monday, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said the administration was “concerned by the way that ISIL attempts to target religious minorities” — including Christians — in Iraq and Syria. But when a reporter asked the spokesman if the White House was prepared to call the situation genocide, he declined to give the acts that distinction.

“My understanding is, the use of that word involves a very specific legal determination that has at this point not been reached,” Earnest told reporters, according to a transcript published on the White House website. “But we have been quite candid and direct about how ISIL’s tactics are worthy of the kind of international, robust response that the international community is leading. And those tactics include a willingness to target religious minorities, including Christians.”

ISIL is an acronym for the Islamic State, which controls large swaths of land in Iraq and Syria and has been accused of widespread atrocities and human rights abuses in those areas.

The European Parliament and Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe have recently adopted resolutions that accuse the organization’s operatives of committing genocide, which is outlawed under a 1948 United Nations treaty that defines the crime as certain acts “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.”

Those actions include murdering or inflicting serious harm upon a group’s members.

According to ADF International, there are now 1.8 million fewer Christians living in Iraq and Syria than there were a few years ago. The religious freedom advocacy group places the current population at 775,000, down from 2.65 million, and says Yazidis have nearly been wiped out.

The European Parliament’s resolution, adopted last month, accuses the Islamic State of “committing genocide against Christians and Yazidis, and other religious and ethnic minorities, who do not agree with” the group’s radical interpretation of Islam. It states the Islamic State has slaughtered, beaten, extorted, enslaved and forcibly converted many minorities, and its operatives have also vandalized cemeteries, monuments, churches and other places of worship.

The resolution called for the United Nations Security Council to refer the matter to the International Criminal Court, which would formally investigate the genocide allegations. The court would also prosecute and try the accused, and impose punishments upon a guilty verdict.

ADF International has issued a similar call for action.

The United States has also been asked to characterize the Islamic State’s actions as genocide.
The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, an independent commission that makes recommendations to politicians, in December asked the government to designate Christians and four other groups as victims of Islamic State genocide in Iraq and Syria. So far, though, the White House has yet to place the label on the Middle East situation.

“In that region of the world, Christians are a religious minority, and we certainly have been concerned,” Earnest said during the press briefing on Monday. “That’s one of the many reasons we’re concerned with ISIL and their tactics, which is that it’s an affront to our values as a country to see people attacked, singled out or slaughtered based on their religious beliefs.”

The Omnibus spending bill approved by Congress in mid-December includes a provision that says the Secretary of State, John Kerry, must submit an evaluation on the Islamic State’s attacks on Christians and other people of faith in the Middle East to lawmakers within 90 days. That evaluation must include if the situation “constitutes mass atrocities or genocide,” the bill states.

The deadline for that report falls in mid-March.