GENEVA AND WASHINGTON — US Secretary of State John Kerry, shuttling to Geneva for consultations with the United Nations, said he hoped that an announcement could be imminent as early as May 3 that a partial Syria cease-fire would be extended to Aleppo, after the United States and Russia agreed to expand a joint Syria cease-fire monitoring and enforcement operation out of the UN in Geneva. But even as Kerry and UN Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura consulted with the Russians on plans for an expanded, “24/7” Syria cease-fire monitoring mechanism, fighting raged on in Aleppo as Syrian state media accused rebels of an attack on a hospital a week after the regime was accused of attacks on three medical facilities; one of those attacks last week killed one hospital’s last pediatrician.

"The bottom line is, there is no justification for this horrific violence that targets civilians or medical facilities or first responders, no matter who it is," Kerry told journalists at the State Department May 3. "We condemn any of these attacks no matter who commits them." 

Also on May 3, de Mistura said after meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Moscow, “We all hope — and we have to be cautious — that … perhaps in the next few hours, we will be able to have a relaunch of the cessation of hostilities. If that takes place, then we are on the right track again, and we have been preparing for that.”

Plans for a joint US-Russian Syria cease-fire monitoring operation, to include as many as 18 US military, intelligence and diplomatic personnel and their Russian counterparts and to be based at UN-provided offices in Geneva, were worked out on a whirlwind 36-hour Kerry shuttle to Geneva on May 1-2 and in phone calls with the Russians. Lavrov praised the idea of American and Russian personnel jointly staffing such a monitoring operations center, working out of the same offices, even as it was unclear exactly how joint US-Russian monitoring would mitigate against violations of the struggling Syria cessation of hostilities, which went into effect Feb. 27, but has deteriorated significantly in the past month.