GAZA CITY // Months of bitter fighting in Syria were set to stop today after the military and rebel leaders agreed to a temporary ceasefire for Eid Al Adha.
The Syrian military command said it would halt operations from this morning until October 29 in line with the four-day truce proposed by the UN and Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi.
But the regime reserved the right to respond to any rebel action.
A commander of the rebel Free Syrian Army also tentatively accepted the terms of the agreement.
"We will respect the ceasefire from tomorrow morning if the Syrian army does the same," said Gen Mustafa Al Sheikh of the FSA, which had previously said it doubted Damascus would stand by any commitment.
Gen Al Sheikh warned he could not speak on behalf of all rebel groups.
"There is not a unified command for all the factions," he said from Turkey. "We speak on behalf of a big enough number of fighters but there are other armed factions who follow other commands."
Meanwhile, a truce between Israel and Hamas brokered by Egypt brought calm to the Gaza Strip yesterday.
An exchange of rockets, mortars and airstrikes that began on Monday and increased after the emir of Qatar's visit to the Palestinian territory on Tuesday ended with eight Palestinians reported dead and two Thai workers injured in Israel.
The agreement to a ceasefire in Syria followed a day of fierce fighting across the country and major advances by rebels in Aleppo.
Residents in Achrafiyeh district, in the heights of the city on a route between its central and northern parts, said about 200 rebels had moved into the area for the first time.
Rebels also captured a military base in the north-eastern province of Raqa yesterday as regime forces bombed Harasta, a suburb of Damascus.
Five people were killed there when Syrian troops pounded the town with tank and rocket fire, after rebels overran two army roadblocks on the edge of the town, opposition campaigners said.
Activists also reported army artillery on the town of Anadan, north-west of Aleppo.
The UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon and the US state department reacted cautiously to the ceasefire, which has been billed by diplomats as a last-ditch effort to encourage talks to end the 19-month civil war that has killed as many as 34,000 Syrians.
"It's important that all sides will adhere to this," the UN spokesman Martin Nesirky, speaking for Mr Ban. "We all understand that there is a lack of trust between parties, and therefore we all understand that we cannot be sure yet what will transpire."
The state department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said: "What we are hoping and expecting is that they will not just talk the talk of ceasefire, but that they will walk the walk, beginning with the regime, and we will be watching very closely."
UN aid agencies are ready to take advantage of a ceasefire to visit areas that have been difficult to reach due to fighting, a spokesman in Geneva said.
The UN refugee agency UNHCR said it had prepared emergency kits for distribution for as many as 13,000 families in previously inaccessible areas, including Homs and the north-eastern city of Hasaka.
"We and our partners want to be in a position to move quickly if security allows over the next few days," said the UNHCR Syria representative, Tarik Kurdi, in Damascus.
Earlier attempts at ceasefires - notably an agreement hammered out by Mr Brahimi's predecessor Kofi Anna in April - fell flat because of unrelenting attacks by regime forces and Syria's loosely knit bands of rebel groups, which do not fall under one command.
hnaylor@thenational.ae
* With additional reporting by Agence France-Presse, Associated Presse, Reuters and Bloomberg News
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