Violence left at 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. The armed opposition, instead, was highly critical of the proposal, saying it lacks legitimacy.
Details of the plan must still be worked out over the next several weeks. 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.
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.
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. It said some maps of the “de-escalation zones” that were released are not accurate and will not be accepted because the armed opposition did not negotiate them.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the government’s 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.
Ahmad al-Masalmeh, who is based in the southern province of Daraa that borders Jordan, said there were six breaches in the province when government forces shelled opposition-held areas. The Observatory and al-Masalmeh said government forces targeted a rebel position near the southern town of Khirbet Ghazaleh, killing four fighters.
The Observatory and the Ghouta Media Center, an activist collective, said a child was wounded when government forces shelled the Damascus suburb of Kfar Batna.
Syrian, Russian, Turkish and U.S.-led coalition aircraft sometimes operate in the same areas in Syria. It is not yet clear how the new plan would affect flightpaths of coalition warplanes battling militants from the Islamic State group – and whether the American air force would abide by a diminished air space.
The Pentagon said the de-escalation agreement would not affect the U.S.-led air campaign against ISIS.
A previous cease-fire agreement that went into effect on Dec. 30, 2016 helped reduce overall violence in Syria for several weeks but eventually collapsed. Other attempts at a cease-fire in Syria have all failed.