DAMASCUS // A convoy delivering aid to civilians trapped in the Syrian city of Homs was hit and a driver wounded on Saturday, as the regime and rebels accused each other of breaking a humanitarian truce.
The violence came a day after 83 children, women and elderly people who survived more than 600 days of an army siege were evacuated in a UN-supervised operation.
Delivery of aid to the rebel-held areas of Homs’ Old City were supposed to begin on Saturday, the second day of a three-day truce, but was delayed after fighting erupted in the morning.
The regime and opposition blamed each other for the clashes.
Hours later a Syrian Red Crescent convoy came under attack. “Shots fired targeting aid trucks and the team,” the Red Crescent said on Twitter.
“Mortar shells falling in close proximity near the team and aid trucks that moved into Old City.” It added that a driver was wounded.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, and it was not clear if the violence would stop a hard-won deal for the United Nations to deliver much-needed aid to civilians in Homs and evacuate all those who to leave.
The evacuation and aid delivery were made possible by a surprise UN-brokered deal between the government and rebels to observe a three-day “humanitarian pause” in hostilities.
But five explosions were heard at 8.30am in the besieged neighbourhoods, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
The regime and opposition blamed each other for the clashes.
Homs governor Talal Al Barrazi blamed the violence on “terrorists” – the term used by the regime to describe rebels trying to overthrow President Bashar Al Assad.
“The armed terrorist groups broke the truce this morning in the Old City of Homs by launching mortar rounds at the police headquarters in the Saa area,” Mr Barazi said.
Activists accused the regime of breaking the truce.
“The besieged areas have been pounded with mortar rounds since Saturday morning,” said the Unified Media Office activist group in the besieged areas.
“The shelling is also targeting the road on which the humanitarian aid is supposed to be transported.”
Syria’s exiled opposition expressed concern the aid delivery could be aborted, saying it would be “devastating” for besieged civilians.
Desperately needed food and medicines have been held up for months in a UN warehouse in a government-controlled area.
Homs, much of which has been reduced to rubble, was dubbed “the capital of the revolution” by activists before a bloody 2012 counter-offensive by regime forces recaptured much of the city.
The army blockaded the remaining rebel-held areas after their 2012 assault. They tightened the noose last summer by capturing the town of Qusayr, which cut off rebel supply lines to neighbouring Lebanon.
Meanwhile, new attacks with helicopter-launched barrel bombs killed at least 20 people in the northern city of Aleppo, in a campaign that has killed hundreds since December, the Observatory said.
Similar attacks were also reported on Daraya in the south.
The raids came as the Al Qaeda affiliate Al Nusra Front and allied Islamist rebel groups launched a new offensive against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil), a hardline Islamist militant group, in Syria’s oil-rich east.
More than 136,000 people have died in the nearly three-year civil war.
* Agence France-Presse