BEIRUT — A Syrian opposition official said on Wednesday it was up to the United Nations to say when peace talks would resume, after a Russian official said they would restart on May 10, adding that the opposition would not take part until its demands were met.
George Sabra of the High Negotiations Committee (HNC) was responding to comments earlier on Wednesday by Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov of Russia, a major ally of President Bashar al-Assad.
“All the while real steps aren’t taken on the ground in Syria, the participation of the delegation of the HNC will remain suspended,” Sabra told Reuters.
The HNC suspended its participation in the peace talks last week as violence escalated on the ground and the negotiations made no progress towards discussing a political transition.
Meanwhile, air strikes and shelling on Syria’s second city Aleppo and a town to its west continued unabated as a surge in violence tests a troubled ceasefire.
UN chief Ban Ki-moon said he was “deeply concerned” by the fighting and urged both sides to stick to the two-month-old truce and troubled peace talks in Geneva.
“The cessation of hostilities should go on, otherwise it will be very difficult for humanitarian workers to deliver,” Ban told reporters in Vienna.
The fighting severely threatens the February ceasefire brokered by the United States and Russia and comes as UN-brokered peace talks in Geneva stall.
On the ground, at least two male civilians died in rebel rocket fire on government-controlled areas in the west of Aleppo city on Tuesday afternoon, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
In the rebel-held east, the air strikes and shelling came down “like rain,” one resident told AFP.
Fifteen civilians were killed in air strikes on several rebel-held districts, according to civil defence volunteers known as White Helmets.
Another three civilians — two women and a child — were killed in government artillery shelling on another eastern neighborhood, they said.
“The planes are bombing markets, residential areas... We’re exhausted, we can’t keep up,” one Civil Defense worker said. — Agencies
