Peace Talks Start After Hitch

Talks between government and rebel delegations got off to a rocky start in Geneva on Thursday, Al Jazeera reported.

The United Nations-sponsored talks were held up when the opposition delegation threatened not to attend the opening ceremony because of disagreements over the session format. They eventually attended, arriving late as one bloc.

“I ask you to work together. I know it’s not going to be easy to end this horrible conflict and lay the foundation for a country at peace with itself, sovereign and unified,” the U.N. special envoy to Syria, Staffan de Mistura, said at the ceremony.

This is the fourth round of negotiations in Geneva, and the first time the opposing sides in Syria have come face-to-face in U.N.-sponsored talks in three years, Reuters reported. The opposition delegation includes the rebel representative High Negotiations Committee (HNC) supported by Saudi Arabia, as well as two other groups that are pro-Russia and tolerated by the government.

“It is your opportunity and solemn responsibility … not to condemn future generations of Syrian children to long years of bitter and bloody conflict,” de Mistura said.

Car Bomb Near al-Bab Kills 45

At least 45 people were killed in a car bomb explosion near al-Bab on Friday, Al Jazeera reported.

A suicide bomber targeted Turkish-backed rebels at a checkpoint busy with civilians in the early morning. Turkish-backed forces were reported to have pushed the so-called Islamic State out of al-Bab the previous day. The northern town was the extremists’ last significant foothold in Aleppo province.

Several rebels were killed by mines in al-Bab on Thursday while clearing the town of unexploded ordnance, according to the United Kingdom-based monitor, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Turkey launched its operation in Syria in August 2016 with the aim of pushing back both ISIS and Kurdish forces from its shared border with Syria.

Russia Says It Tested 162 Weapons in Syria

Russia tested 162 weapons in Syria and only 10 did not perform well, its defense minister Sergei Shoigu said on Thursday, NPR reported.

“We tested 162 types of contemporary and modernized weapons in Syria, which showed a high level of effectiveness,” Shoigu said.

Moscow first intervened militarily in Syria on behalf of the government in September 2015, and has been open about using its intervention as an opportunity to test new weapons.

Russian support has been key to recent government victories in Aleppo and around Damascus. In December 2016, France and the United States called for an investigation of alleged Russian war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Aleppo battle.

Russia routinely dismisses accusations that it has killed civilians in Syria, labeling reports by monitors such as Human Rights Watch part of an anti-Kremlin “information war.”

RECOMMENDED READS:

• The Guardian: Syrian Peace Talks: Women Issue Plea to Find Missing Loved Ones
• The Washington Post: ‘Al-Qaida is Eating Us’: Syrian Rebels Are Losing out to Extremists
• Financial Times: Russia Asks World Powers to Pay for Syria Reconstruction
• War on The Rocks: What a Syrian Neighborhood Can Teach Us About the Talks to End the Civil War
• Combating Terrorism Center: The Formation of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham and Wider Tensions in the Syrian Insurgency