Kurdish fighters capture military air base in northern Syria

An agreement to cease hostilities in Syria has been reached, Secretary of State John Kerry announced Thursday in Munich.

The blast came a day after an worldwide rights group said Syrian government forces and the Russian military have been carrying out daily cluster bomb attacks over the past two weeks in Syria, killing 37 people.

No Russian aircraft operated near Aleppo on Wednesday and the nearest target hit by the Russian air force in Syria was located some 20 km away from the city, said Konashenkov, adding that only war planes and strike drones of the U.S.-led coalition were seen above Aleppo.

Russia, Syria and Iran argue that other groups, notably some supported by Turkey, Saudi Arabia and some other Arab states, should not be eligible for the ceasefire, and there was no sign Friday that those differences had been resolved.

Following a marathon meeting in Munich aimed at resurrecting peace talks that collapsed last week, the powers, including the United States, Russia and more than a dozen other nations, reaffirmed their commitment to a political transition when conditions on the ground improved.

The war has left more than 250,000 dead and created the worst refugee crisis for Europe since World War II. “If we see action and implementation, we will see you very soon in Geneva”.

The talks broke down last month before they really started, due largely to gains by Assad’s military with the heavy backing of Russian air strikes. He compared the Russian negotiating stance on Syria to Moscow’s handling of the fighting between government forces and separatist, pro-Russian militias in Ukraine.

Former U.S. ambassador to Syria Robert Ford says, “The most important thing is to somehow pressure the Russians and the Syrians to stop the aerial bombardments which are causing these floods of refugees”. The White House, meanwhile, has blasted Russian President Vladimir Putin for bombing anyone opposed to the Assad regime, saying the indiscriminate attacks have been instrumental in fuelling recruiting for extremist groups, including ISIS.

Lavrov is set to meet with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Thursday in Munich. It would take place in stages and would include Russian airdrops of relief supplies to at least 15 towns and cities, humanitarian access by the United Nations, and a stop to Russian and Syrian government airstrikes. Further evidence of Russia’s influence on the fighting emerged on Thursday, when Kurdish fighters, backed by Russian air strikes, overran a military air base that had been in the hands of the rebels since 2013.

French UN ambassador Francois Delattre said: “The (Syrian) regime and its allies can not pretend they are extending a hand to the opposition while with their other hand they are trying to destroy them”.

“We have a common determination to reduce the suffering of the Syrian people”, he said. Its troops threaten to retake the rebel stronghold of Aleppo, once Syria’s most populous city.

The Assad government for years has repeatedly promised humanitarian access but has rarely lived up to its promises.