Syria truce ends

Two 20-truck aid convoys destined for eastern Aleppo with enough supplies to feed 185,000 people for a month are still stuck in Turkey, a UN spokesman said yesterday, hours after a ceasefire in Syria expired.

The UN has said it does not have sufficient security guarantees from all sides in the conflict, now in its sixth year, to be able to deliver to eastern Aleppo, which is held by rebels battling to topple President Bashar al-Assad.

The aid has been sitting at the border for around a week. The UN also wants to deliver to other hard-to-reach areas in Syria, but says it has not received necessary permissions from the Syrian government to proceed, reports Reuters.

The seven-day ceasefire declared by the Syrian army expired at midnight with no announcement of its extension. A Syrian rebel official said the truce had ended, and there was no hope the eastern Aleppo aid would be delivered.

Meanwhile, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said yesterday that Turkey could create a 5,000-square-kilometre  safe zone in Syria by pushing further south in its military operation in the country.

Turkey launched its operation in northern Syria on August 24, sending in tanks and special forces to support opposition fighters in a bid to remove Islamic State (IS) extremists and Kurdish militia forces from its border.

Russia's defence ministry yesterday appeared to bury a week-long Syria ceasefire brokered with the United States, saying rebel violations made it "pointless" for government troops to uphold the truce. "Considering that the conditions of the ceasefire are not being respected by the rebels, we consider it pointless for the Syrian government forces to respect it unilaterally," Lieutenant General Sergei Rudskoy said in a televised briefing.