More than 100 die as UN-backed ceasefire fails

Syria’s air force fired missiles and dropped barrel bombs on rebel strongholds while opposition fighters attacked regime positions, flouting a UN-backed ceasefire that was supposed to quiet fighting over a holiday weekend but never took hold.

The failure to push through a truce so limited in its ambitions — just four days — has been a sobering reflection of the international community’s inability to ease 19 months of bloodshed in Syria.

It also suggests that the stalemated civil war will drag on, threatening to draw in Syria’s neighbours such as Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan. “This conflict has now taken a dynamic of its own which should be worrying to everyone,” said Salman Shaikh, director of the Brookings Doha Centre thinktank.