Aid deliveries begin in Syria towns under truce

Trucks carrying food and aid deliveries entered four Syrian towns Sunday, nearly a month after a ceasefire agreement was reached between warring parties, the Red Cross and Syrian sources said.

 The Red Cross and the Syrian Arab Red Crescent helped to organise the convoys that took food and medical aid to Fuaa and Kafraya in northwestern Idlib province and to Zabadani and Madaya in the Damascus countryside.

 Pawel Krysiek, a spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross, said 21 trucks entered Madaya while two others entered adjacent Zabadani which is near the border with Lebanon.

 He said the food deliveries were made with support from the United Nations which had brokered a six-month ceasefire to halt months of fighting in the towns between regime forces and rebels groups.

 A Syrian source said 10 trucks had also entered Fuaa and Kafraya.

 The six-month UN-brokered truce entered into effect on September 24.

 Under the agreement, the Red Crescent was to deliver aid to the towns as well as evacuate thousands of civilians from Fuaa and Kafraya.

 Those evacuations would come with safe passage for rebels and their families from Zabadani to northwestern Syria.

 But the evacuations and aid deliveries were delayed by road closures in Idlib province.

 Short truces agreed previously between the warring parties have often been broken.