International News

BERLIN, (APP/AFP) – US Secretary of State
John Kerry warned Syria’s Bashar al-Assad of “repercussions” if his regime flouts a new truce being negotiated, as talks to halt the violence shifted to Berlin Wednesday.
Russia has said a new ceasefire to halt fighting in Aleppo could be
imminent, with Syria’s divided northern city hit by a wave of violence that has killed more than 270 people since April 22.
With the UN Security Council to hold urgent talks on the crisis later
Wednesday, diplomatic efforts to stem the violence shifted to Germany where
Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier was to meet UN Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura, Syria’s main opposition leader Riad Hijab and France’s top diplomat Jean-Marc Ayrault.
Renewed fighting between regime and rebel forces has centred on Aleppo, where heavy clashes left around 30 people dead on Tuesday, with Kerry issuing a stark warning to Assad if his government failed to abide by the new deal.
“If Assad does not adhere to (the new ceasefire), there will clearly be
repercussions and one of them may be the total destruction of the ceasefire and they go back to war,” Kerry told reporters after returning from an earlier round of talks in Geneva.
“I don’t think that Russia wants that. I don’t think Assad is going to
benefit from that,” Kerry added.
The Security Council meeting to discuss the bloodshed, which is threatening
to derail international peace efforts to end the five-year war in Syria, was
called for by France and Britain.
“(Aleppo) is to Syria what Sarajevo was to Bosnia,” said France’s UN
ambassador Francois Delattre.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said late Tuesday he hoped to agree
a freeze of fighting in Aleppo “in the near future, maybe even in the next few hours” after meeting de Mistura in Moscow.
A February 27 truce between Assad’s regime and non-jihadist rebels raised
hopes for efforts to resolve the five-year conflict, but it has come close to collapse due to the recent surge in violence.
After a relative gap Monday and early Tuesday, rebels in eastern Aleppo
fired at least 65 rockets into government-controlled neighbourhoods, Syrian
state news agency SANA said.
The rockets killed 16 people and wounded 68, including at least three women
at Al-Dabbeet maternity hospital, it reported.
It was the sixth time a medical facility has been hit in 11 days in Aleppo,
the International Committee for the Red Cross said, calling it “unacceptable.”
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor said it counted at least 19
dead and 80 wounded from the attacks on government-held areas, while civil
defence workers said air strikes on the rebel-held east killed 11 civilians,
including a child.