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Aleppo Local Council Rejects Presence of Russian Forces on Castello Road

Presence of the Russian forces on the Castello Road is not acceptable due to its lack of neutrality, says local council
Aleppo Local Council Rejects Presence of Russian Forces on Castello Road

The local opposition council in Aleppo rejected on Tuesday any deployment of Russian armed forces on Castello Road, saying that it and not the Assad regime was the party that should monitor the delivery of aid to the area.

Brita Hagi Hassan, head of the local council told Reuters he had received an aid plan but that it did not contain any details about how the operation would be carried out. He said, “The presence of the Russian side on the Castello Road is not acceptable due to its lack of neutrality.”

He added that the party supervising the road must not open the shipments, which should include fuel, medicine and flour.

It is expected that Aleppo — which is divided between areas under opposition control in the eastern part and the regime in the western part — will receive aid within the framework of the recently brokered Russian-American deal.

The Assad regime announced that it rejected the delivery of humanitarian aid to Aleppo especially from Turkey without coordination with the United Nations.

Meanwhile, activist Hassan Abou Nouh said that the bombardment had stopped in the city of Telbeesa (Homs countryside), which is under the control of rebel groups and which was subjected to heavy bombardment in the period before the truce. He told Agence-France Presse: “Usually we are kept up all night by warplanes, but we slept this night.”

The Russian-American truce deal excepts what they call “jihadist groups”, including the Islamic State group and Jabhat Fateh al-Sham (formerly Nusra Front), on the model of the previous deal which they reached in February and lasted for weeks.

This article was translated and edited by The Syrian Observer. Responsibility for the information and views set out in this article lies entirely with the author.

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