The Latest: Group says more than 300,000 killed in Syria war
BEIRUT (AP) — The Latest on developments in Syria where a cease-fire brokered by the U.S. and Russia has come into effect (all times local):
3:10 p.m.
A Syrian activist group that tracks the country’s civil war says more than 300,000 people have been killed so far in the conflict.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Tuesday that the dead include 59,000 government troops and more than 86,000 civilians. The rest include rebels, foreign fighters, Hezbollah militants, defectors from the Syrian army and others.
The Observatory says its records show that since the crisis began in March 2011 and until a truce went into effect on Monday evening, 301,781 people have been killed in Syria.
The group says the real death toll could be 70,000 higher since many insurgent groups don’t announce their deaths and because there are other deaths that are not documented.
The latest death toll figure from the U.N., which stopped tracking casualties in 2015, had said that 250,000 have been killed in Syria.
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2:35 p.m.
The Islamic State group has released a gory video in which its fighters are seen killing 19 people from Syria’s eastern province, accusing them of being spies for the West.
In the 12-minute video, the narrator mocks U.S. and Western intelligence agencies for being unable to prevent IS fighters from carrying out attacks in France, Belgium and Germany.
Instead, the IS narrator says, Western intelligence recruited the 19-member spy cell to infiltrate Deir el-Zour province, an IS stronghold.
The video comes as a U.S-Russian brokered cease-fire is starting to take hold in parts of Syria.
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2:25 p.m.
Turkey’s foreign minister is accusing the Syrian government of not abiding by a U.S.-Russia brokered cease-fire.
Mevlut Cavusoglu told reporters in the coastal city of Antalya on Tuesday the Syrian government broke the cease-fire immediately after it came into effect the previous evening.
Cavusoglu says he hopes all parties will work to make the ceasefire permanent and that efforts “cannot be one-sided.”
Turkey’s military said earlier in the day that it shelled two targets inside Syria after a mortar round fell inside Turkey, minutes after a cease-fire came into effect. It said the mortar round was fired from Syrian government-controlled territory.
Cavusoglu stressed that Turkey will work to bring peace to Syria, but will also continue fighting the Islamic State group and Syrian Kurdish rebels it sees as a threat.
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2:15 p.m.
Turkey’s state-run news agency says 20 U.N. trucks have left Turkey to deliver humanitarian aid to the war-torn Syrian city of Aleppo.
The shipment comes as a cease-fire, brokered by the United States and Russia, is holding across most of the country.
The Anadolu agency says the trucks left around noon Tuesday from the Cilvegozu border gate in the southern province of Hatay. A total of 40 trucks are expected to cross the border by the end of the day.
On Monday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had said that “food, clothing and children’s toys” were to be delivered by the United Nations as well as the Turkish Red Crescent through corridors opened up by the cease-fire, which went into effect at sunset.
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1:40 p.m.
The Russian foreign ministry is pushing to make public the text a cease-fire deal for Syria that Russia and the United States agreed to after marathon talks in Geneva last week.
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told reporters on Tuesday that Moscow wants the deal, which launched a nationwide cessation of hostilities in Syria, to be made public but that the U.S. opposes such a move.
Lavrov said Moscow “has nothing to hide” and wants the U.N. Security Council to formally approve the Syria truce deal as well.
Syria observer say the cease-fire appears to be holding for now after it came into effect at sunset Monday.
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1 p.m.
Two former U.N. envoys for Syria say they are hopeful that the Russia-U.S.-brokered cease-fire in the country will stand.
Former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan says the agreement appears to be holding, despite some minor skirmishes. Annan was the U.N. first special envoy for Syria, lasting six months before resigning in August 2012 after failing to secure sufficient backing for a peace deal.
His successor, Algerian diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi, says he is praying the new deal will work. Brahimi told reporters in Berlin on Tuesday that the cease-fire should be seen as a first step, and even if fighting resumes, “the Russians and the Americans will continue to work together.”
Brahimi was the U.N. envoy for Syria from 2012 until 2014, when he was succeeded by incumbent Staffan de Mistura.
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12:45 p.m.
The U.N. humanitarian aid coordinator says it needs to make sure its staff and partners “are not in mortal danger” before starting convoys into parts of Syria under a new cease-fire plan.
OCHA spokesman Jens Laerke says humanitarian aid teams are ready to move into areas such as the troubled northern city of Aleppo. He said the agency needs “peace to be reinstated before we can go in.”
Laerke told reporters in Geneva on Tuesday that he did not know who would make the final assessment when conditions were safe enough for deliveries to resume.
He says no deliveries had been made since the U.S.-Russia brokered cease-fire went into effect on Monday at sunset. The deal is expected to pave the way for U.N.-led aid convoys to resume.
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12:20 p.m.
Turkey’s military says it has shelled two targets inside Syria after a mortar round struck inside Turkey minutes after a cease-fire came into effect in Syria the previous evening.
Maj. Gen. Ertugrulgazi Ozkurkcu said in a statement on Tuesday that the mortar round was determined to have been fired from Syrian government-controlled territory.
It exploded near the border in Turkey’s southern Hatay province shortly after 7:00pm local time Monday.
The statement says Turkish artillery responded with six rounds against two targets, in line with the Turkish military’s rules of engagement.
A U.S-Russia-brokered cease-fire appeared to be holding on Tuesday in Syria, despite sporadic and minor violations.
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10:35 a.m.
The Syrian military says its forces have shot down two Israeli aircraft — a warplane and a drone — near the Israeli-controlled part of the Golan Heights.
The report came as a U.S.-Russia-brokered truce appeared to be holding in Syria on Tuesday, after coming into effect the night before.
The Israeli military quickly denied the Syrian claim. It says that “two surface-to-air missiles were launched from Syria after the mission overnight to target Syrian artillery positions” but that the safety of Israeli planes was not compromised.
The Syrian military statement, reported by the state news agency SANA and state TV, says the Israeli plane was shot down during Israeli air raids on Syrian army positions early on Tuesday. A drone was shot down as well nearby.
Israeli warplanes have conducted several air raids on Syrian army positions over the past weeks after stray shells hit the Israeli-occupied area.
Syria and Israel have been at a state of war for decades. Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria in the 1967 Mideast war
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10 a.m.
Syrian opposition activists and monitoring groups say the cease-fire in Syria appears to be holding since coming into effect the previous night, despite sporadic and minor violations.
Rami Abdurrahman from the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says “calm is prevailing” in most of the country on Tuesday, though there were minor violations in central Hama province.
Another activist group, the Local Coordination Committees reported some shelling in Aleppo and the southern region of Quneitra, while state media said there were “breaches” of the truce by rebels in the contested city of Aleppo.
Ahmad al-Masalmeh, an opposition activist in the southern province of Daraa — where Syria’s crisis began in 2011 — says the region was also calm.
The week-long, U.S.- and Russia-brokered cease-fire started at sunset Monday.
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