Published May 24, 2016
The Latest on the violence in Syria a day after deadly attacks claimed by the Islamic State group targeted government strongholds (all times local):
1:10 p.m.
The Russian military says it has called for a 72-hour cease-fire in Syria between government and opposition forces in two Damascus suburbs.
In a statement issued late Monday, Lt. Gen. Sergei Kuralenko says this would allow Russian war planes to carry out airstrikes against the Nusra Front, the Syrian branch of al-Qaida.
Kuralenko, who heads the Russian center monitoring joint efforts with the United States to curb the fighting, says the Russians have called for a "regime of silence" in Eastern Ghouta and Darayya starting at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday.
He says Moscow urges "all parties concerned to stop offensive operations and shooting and to distance themselves from the regions controlled by" the al-Qaida affiliate in Syria.
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11:00 a.m.
The World Health Organization says a suicide attack at a hospital in Syria's coastal city of Jableh the previous day has killed 43 people.
WHO says most of those killed were patients and their visiting family members but there were also three doctors and nurses killed in Monday's attack. The organization says the hospital is no longer working.
The bombing was part of a coordinated wave of attacks claimed by the Islamic State group in Jableh and the city of Tartus, government strongholds that have so far remained mostly immune to the violence of Syria's civil war, now in its sixth year.
Government officials have said that at least 80 died in Monday's devastating assaults, while the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Tuesday that 154 had died.
https://www.foxnews.com/world/the-latest-russia-calls-for-temporary-truce-near-damascus