WASHINGTON: The United States and Russia agreed to extend a cessation of hostilities in Syria to include Aleppo province on Wednesday.

According to the US State Department, the two countries would coordinate to strengthen monitoring of the new arrangement.

“It is critical that Russia redoubles efforts to press Syrian President Bashar al Assad to comply with the new arrangement while Washington does its part with Syrian opposition forces,” the department said.

“Our objective remains, and has always been, a single nationwide cessation of hostilities covering all of Syria - not a series of local truces,” the statement added.

The agreement came amid fierce fighting in Aleppo and as air strikes pounded rebels east of the capital Damascus.

The renewed violence has threatened the complete breakdown of a landmark ceasefire between President Bashar al-Assad’s regime and non-jihadist rebels brokered by Moscow and Washington in late February.

Fighting has been especially intense in and around Syria’s devastated second city of Aleppo, with more than 280 civilians killed since April 22.

Some of the heaviest clashes in Aleppo in months continued on Wednesday as rebel forces pressed an offensive against regime troops on the city’s western outskirts, a monitor said.

Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said the fighting was “the most violent in Aleppo in over a year”.

The rebels have fired a barrage of rockets into regime-held neighbourhoods in western Aleppo in recent days, with three more civilians killed in the attacks early on Wednesday, Syrian state news agency SANA said.

Regime warplanes were hitting the advancing rebels, giving opposition-held areas of eastern Aleppo a respite from air strikes, a correspondent in the city said.

Suspected regime strikes also pummelled the rebel stronghold of Eastern Ghouta near Damascus, the Observatory said, after a temporary freeze on fighting in the area expired overnight.The district was hit with at least 22 air strikes, but there was no immediate word on casualties, it said.

Russia had said on Tuesday it hoped a new ceasefire for Aleppo could be agreed “within hours” but on Wednesday said truce efforts had been stymied by militants.

Russian military spokesman Igor Konashenkov said a plan had been agreed for a “regime of silence” in and around Aleppo but fell apart following rocket attacks by Al-Nusra Front, an Al Qaeda affiliate.

In Berlin, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and French counterpart Jean-Marc Ayrault held talks with UN Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura.

After the talks, De Mistura issued a plea for a halt in fighting in Aleppo.

“The alternative is truly quite catastrophic, because we could see 400,000 people moving towards the Turkish border,” said De Mistura, who this week met US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

Steinmeier, who also met with Syria’s main opposition leader Riad Hijab, said “the terrible images from Aleppo in recent days” showed “what is at stake” in the conflict.

“Either we put peace efforts back on track... or we risk falling back into escalation, into an explosion of violence and the continuation of the civil war.” The United Nations said the Syrian government had refused a request for aid access to rebel-held eastern Aleppo, warning that the area could soon be besieged.

Published in Dawn, May 5th, 2016