The Syrian regime announced on Thursday a conditional cease-fire in the de-escalation zone, northwest of Syria, only hours after UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres established a board of inquiry to investigate attacks on the organization’s humanitarian facilities in the area following a request of two-thirds of Security Council members.
"The investigation will cover destruction of, or damage to facilities on the de-confliction list and UN-supported facilities in the area,” UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Thursday, adding that the board of inquiry will "ascertain the facts of these incidents and report to the secretary-general.”
In a report released last month, UN human rights chief Michelle Bachelet said air strikes on schools, hospitals, markets and bakeries seem highly unlikely that they are all being hit by accident.
On Thursday, a Russian diplomat in New York criticized the UN chief’s decision to establish the board.
Meanwhile in Damascus, the Syrian official news agency, SANA, cited a military source who said the government had granted approval for a ceasefire in the de-escalation zone in Idlib province starting from Thursday night.
But the source conditioned the move to opposition factions withdrawing forces and weaponry from a buffer zone as per the deal between Moscow and Ankara.
As part of a deal in Sochi, the two sides agreed last September to establish a buffer zone to halt assaults on Idlib.
The regime’s announcement came after Syrian regime forces have intensified their attacks on areas in the northwest of Syria as Russia introduced its special forces to make advances at any cost in the countryside of Latakia.
Regime forces seized a handful of four villages, fields and hills in the Hama countryside in the past two days, the first such military achievement since more than two months.
Last April 30, Syrian government forces backed by allied militia and Russian air power launched an offensive against opposition factions in Idlib, as well as parts of the neighboring provinces of Aleppo, Hama and Latakia.
