Russia Shifting Artillery North as Peace Talks Fall Apart

The United States said on Thursday it was concerned over reports that Russia is repositioning artillery to Syria’s north to support what looks to be an impending government offensive on rebel-held areas of Aleppo, as the cease-fire and peace talks fall apart.

The opposition’s High Negotiation Council (HNC) will depart Geneva by Friday, leaving experts behind for technical consultations, according to the group’s chief negotiator Assad Zoubi. U.N. envoy Staffan de Mistura is set to decide on Friday whether the peace talks aimed at finding a political solution to Syria’s five-year-long war can continue without the HNC and despite a steadily crumbling cease-fire.

Western diplomats told Reuters that de Mistura would most likely continue the talks into next week due to the late arrival of the government delegation.

“The HNC stayed the course, including through extended technical discussions on real substance,” said one anonymous diplomat. “It’s natural that the special envoy may continue discussion with those still in town who have yet to offer any real ideas, to press them to do so.”

Another senior Western diplomat said: “It’s understandable that the opposition felt unable to stay further given sustained regime attacks on Syrian civilians and continuation of siege and starvation tactics… Those who back the regime need to get a leash on them.”

Kurds Battle Government Forces in Qamishli

As ground battles return across the country, heavy clashes broke out between Kurdish militias and pro-government forces in the northeast as the Kurds push to expand their control over the city of Qamishli on the border with Turkey.

More than 21 pro-government militiamen and five members of the Kurdish internal security force, the Asayish, have been killed in two days of fighting in Qamishli in what Syrian Kurdish officials told Reuters were the second most violent clashes the area has witnessed since the conflict began in 2011.

At least 40 members of the pro-government National Defense Forces (NDF) militia surrendered to the People’s Protection Units (YPG), the strongest Syrian Kurdish militia, after the YPG overran the government-held Allya prison. YPG militiamen released a video of the incident, which includes footage of the heavily damaged prison.

The mostly Kurdish-controlled city of Qamishli has remained relatively quiet over the past five years of violence, but the government controls a small enclave in the de facto autonomous region.

An anonymous Kurdish official told Reuters that Kurdish forces had seized three government positions in the course of the fighting, including the prison.

The skirmishes began on Wednesday after an officer of a pro-government militia was stopped at an Asayish checkpoint, according to the U.K.-based Syria Observatory for Human Rights.

Largest-Ever Aid Convoy Deploys to Rastan

Aid groups launched on Thursday the largest aid convoy yet in the five-year-long war, after the completion of a U.N.-mediated evacuation of hundreds of besieged residents. The 65-truck convoy of food and medicine will be the first batch of aid to arrive to 120,000 besieged residents in the rebel-held town of Rastan since 2012, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

“This is the largest joint humanitarian convoy we have done in Syria so far,” said ICRC spokesperson Pawel Krzysiek.

The convoy was carrying food packages, wheat flour, medicine and equipment to improve the water supply in Rastan, a city in northern Homs that has been under government siege since 2012.

Earlier in the day, the United Nations evacuated 500 people “in urgent need of life-saving medical attention” from four other besieged towns – two held by rebels and two held by the government.

Recommended Reads

• The Daily Beast: Parents Sue Assad for Son’s Beheading by ISIS
• Foreign Affairs: Moscow’s Playbook in Syria
• The Soufan Group: The Collapse of Syria’s Cease-fire?
• The Cairo Review of Global Affairs: Endgame Strategies in Syria
• Politico: Obama Sees Another Foreign Policy Goal Crumble in Syria