Syria conflict: UN presses Russia to help save truce
Syria conflict: Russia hopes to extend truce to Aleppo
(about 3 hours later)
UN envoy Staffan de Mistura is to meet Russia's foreign minister to discuss efforts to salvage the crumbling cessation of hostilities in Syria.
Russia's foreign minister says a unilateral truce declared by the Syrian military could be extended to the city of Aleppo "in the next few hours".
Mr de Mistura wants Russia and the US, which back opposing sides in the war, to work together to restore the partial truce they negotiated in February.
Sergei Lavrov said Russia was working with the UN and US to include Aleppo in the "regime of calm" that has covered Damascus and Latakia since Saturday.
Washington has criticised Moscow for failing to rein in Syrian government forces around the city of Aleppo.
But Mr Lavrov warned that rebels would have to leave areas where allied jihadist militants were being targeted.
But Moscow says air strikes there have only been targeting "terrorists".
More than 250 people have been killed in Aleppo in the past 10 days.
More than 250 people have died in Aleppo in the past 10 days, most of them civilians, activists say.
About two-thirds of those deaths have been in the rebel-held eastern side of the city, including 50 in an air strike on a hospital the US says was deliberate.
About two-thirds of those deaths have been in the rebel-held eastern side of city, including 50 in an air strike on a hospital that the US says was deliberate.
On Tuesday, 14 people were killed by rebel rocket fire in government-controlled areas of Aleppo, including three in an attack on a hospital, state media reported.
On Tuesday, at least three people were killed and 17 others wounded in a rebel rocket attack on a hospital in the government-controlled Muhafaza district, state media said. Most of the victims were reportedly women and children.
The UN special envoy to Syria, Staffan de Mistura, travelled to Moscow on Tuesday to discuss efforts to urgently rescue the nationwide cessation of hostilities in Syria, which the US and Russia negotiated at the end of February.
'No excuse'
After holding talks with the Italian-Swedish diplomat, Mr Lavrov told reporters that he expected a decision on including Aleppo in the separate regime of calm "in the very near future - maybe in the next few hours".
Speaking in Geneva on the eve of his meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Mr de Mistura described the nine-week-old cessation of hostilities in Syria as a "miracle", but warned it was "becoming very fragile".
The unilateral truce had been effect in Latakia and the eastern Ghouta region around Damascus since the weekend thanks to the efforts of the Russian and US militaries, he said.
He said the situation in Aleppo needed to be addressed urgently.
The aim of Russian, US and UN negotiators was to extend the regime of calm and "ideally make it indefinite", Mr Lavrov added.
"There is no excuse for not finding, again, and reinvigorating and reinstalling and re-implementing what has been the only strong message the Syrian people have heard from all of us - that it is possible to have [peace] talks when finally the cessation of hostilities is reducing the violence," he added.
But he also warned that so-called moderate rebel groups in Aleppo had to leave areas where militants from al-Nusra Front, an al-Qaeda affiliate that is excluded from the cessation of hostilities, were being targeted.
The BBC's Steve Rosenberg in Moscow says the UN envoy knows that Russia has a vital role to play because of its close ties to Damascus and the influence it has on President Bashar al-Assad.
Mr de Mistura said he hoped that by extending local truces, the cessation of hostilities could be reinvigorated.
Mr de Mistura was speaking after holding talks with US Secretary of State John Kerry, who warned that the Syrian conflict was "in many ways out of control".
"We all hope that... in a few hours we can relaunch the cessation of hostilities. If we can do this, we will be back on the right track."
Mr Kerry acknowledged that rebel forces were also fighting on the ground in Aleppo, but he made clear who he thought was chiefly to blame.
The US and the Syrian opposition have dismissed Russia's assertion that Syrian government forces are only targeting al-Nusra and accused them of indiscriminate attacks on civilians.
"You cannot have legitimate political talks about peace when the parties at the table have both signed up to an agreement which calls for a full cessation of hostilities countrywide as well as a full delivery of humanitarian materials countrywide, and yet one party is blatantly violating that agreement," he told reporters.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) warned last week that Aleppo was being "pushed further to the brink of humanitarian disaster".
Mr Kerry said Washington would press rebels operating in Aleppo to distance themselves from the jihadist group al-Nusra Front, an al-Qaeda affiliate which is excluded from the cessation of hostilities.
Large parts of the city have been destroyed and its infrastructure has been severely damaged, leaving civilians without water and electricity for months.
Russia and the Syrian government have said they are targeting on al-Nusra militants, whom they consider terrorists. However, the US and the opposition have accused the government of indiscriminate attacks on civilians.
The partial halt in fighting raised hopes that tentative peace talks in Geneva might bring forward a solution to Syria's bloody five-year civil war.
Mr Kerry later spoke by telephone to Mr Lavrov. The pair "agreed on new measures to be taken", the Russian foreign ministry said, without providing details.
But the truce all but collapsed after renewed violence, particularly in Aleppo.
A Russian military official separately said talks were under way on extending to Aleppo the "regime of calm" that was declared by the Syrian military over the weekend around the capital, Damascus, and the coastal province of Latakia.
