Rebels and Bashar al-Assad force have reached a rare agreement to cease airstrikes on rebel-held areas of Aleppo in order to restore electricity and water supplies after ten days of outage and lack of utilities in regime- held areas, al-Qaeda-linked group al-Nusra Front said in statement.
The statement, which obtained by Zaman Alwasl, stressed that ending the 10-day electricity outage comes in sympathy with people suffering in regime-held areas as Assad's forces didn’t make effort to resolve the crisis.
The deal is scheduled to go into effect Tuesday.
The truce is a preliminary initiative to halt shelling on liberated areas of Aleppo, the statement says.
The statement threatened to re-cut the water and electricity if regime has not abided by the truce which will be tentative.
Activists said if the truce destined to be a real it will be a historic victory for Syrian rebels.
Assad-run news agency (SANA) didn’t mention the truce as its headline was “Electricity back to Aleppo after several days of power outage due to terrorist attacks.”
Truces have become common around the capital, Damascus, as the military blockades have led opposition-held areas to agree to lay down arms in exchange for food and medicine. However, rebels in the north have long rejected any calls for cease-fires, accoring to LA Times.
But the months of unrelenting bombardment, which have left some parts of the Aleppo almost entirely deserted, led to the ultimatum by the rebels. They had threatened that if the government did not relent, the electricity outages would be extended to Damascus and the coastal province of Latakia, a stronghold for President Bashar Assad.
“The regime recently began dropping the explosive barrels on the civilians in an insane way,” said Yaser Ataee, spokesman for the Sharia Committee in Aleppo, which reached the agreement with the government, LA Times reported.
At the time Aleppo, Syria's largest city with about three million people and its economic hub, was undergoing rapid transformation and a true coming of age. Several industrial zones housing mainly garment and textile factories had sprung up all around this northern Syrian city, located a mere 40 miles from the Turkish border. In the eyes of the European Union, it was a gateway for greater economic cooperation with Syria, according to WSJ.
Meanwhile, Syria's three-year civil war has killed more than 150,000 people, a third of them civilians, and caused millions to flee.
For more from Zaman Alwasl, like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter.
Comments About This Article
Please fill the fields below.