DAMASCUS (AP/TASS) – The United Nations will push for a nationwide ceasefire in Syria even after bursts of fighting in the last militant-held region have punctured a two-year truce there, killing hundreds, a UN envoy said Monday.
Geir Pedersen, the UN special envoy for Syria, spoke to reporters after meeting the foreign minister in Damascus. Syria’s economic situation, hit by harsh Western sanctions, is “extremely difficult as close to 15 million people are in need for humanitarian assistance,” he said.
Syrian government forces have over the past years captured much of the country with the help of President Bashar Assad’s allies Russia and Iran.
A ceasefire brokered by Turkey and Russia in March 2020 stopped a Russian-backed government operation on the last militant stronghold in northwestern Syria.
Pedersen pledged that the UN would continue to work on the humanitarian needs of all, refugees and displaced, both in and outside government-controlled areas.
In a latest development, Russian and Syrian forces have reportedly killed scores of Daesh terrorists during a “special operation” conducted in the south of the Arab country.
The operation took place in the town of Jasim in Syria’s Dera’a Province, Russia’s ITAR-TASS news agency reported, citing deputy head of the Russian Reconciliation Center for Syria, Major General Oleg Yegorov as saying on Sunday.
The operation was performed by “Syrian forces supported by [Russian] aircraft,” the report added.
The fatalities, it said, included four organizers of a terrorist attack that killed at least 19 Syrian government soldiers and wounded as many as 27 others on Thursday.
The terror attack targeted a bus carrying the forces near the Syrian capital of Damascus. According to the official Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA), the attack saw the terrorists detonating an explosive device that had been attached to the vehicle.
Daesh invaded Syria in 2014, unleashing a campaign of bloodshed and destruction against the country.