U.S. and Russian military officials will sit in the same room 24 hours a day and jointly pore over maps and intelligence to monitor cease-fire violations in Syria under a new system they hope will save a fast-collapsing truce, Secretary of State John F. Kerry said Tuesday.
Under the new arrangement, which Kerry said could be finalized by Wednesday, lines will be drawn in and around Aleppo, scene of the heaviest recent fighting, to prevent new incursions or attacks from any party in the Syrian civil war.
The city will not be allowed to fall to the government, Kerry said. “If [Syrian President Bashar al-] Assad’s strategy is to somehow think he’s going to carve out Aleppo . . . I’ve got news for him,” he told reporters at the State Department.
He spoke just hours after another deadly strike on a hospital in Aleppo, this time by opposition forces. The official Syrian Arab News Agency said “scores” of people were killed in a rocket assault on government-held neighborhoods in the western part of the city, which has been divided between the opposing forces since 2012. Activists put the number of dead at 19.
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