Residents in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo said that they had been attacked by barrel bombs dropped by a government helicopter less than hour after a ceasefire went into effect, The New York Times reported Monday.

A rebel group in the southern province of Dara’a also claimed to have killed four government soldiers after the truce, which was brokered by American and Russian diplomats.

According to the terms of the truce, which the Times noted “contains many caveats and unenforceable provisions,” the United States and Russia will continue targeting jihadists in Syria while the air force of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad would be banned from flying over any rebel-held areas.

Assad was hardly pacifist in the hours before the truce went into effect, promising to win the five-year-old civil war against his rule. He made his comments in the city of Daraya, which his forces captured from rebels last month. Daraya, the Times observed, “reflected Mr. Assad’s strengthened position” after Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah reinforced and backed up his troops last year. “The Syrian state is determined to recover every area from the terrorists,” Assad said, referring to all rebel groups who oppose his rule. He added that his army would be victorious “regardless of any internal or external circumstances.”

“The agreement comes at a time when Assad’s position on the battlefield is stronger than it has been since the earliest months of the war, thanks to Russian and Iranian military support,” Reuters reported. “Hundreds of thousands of Syrians have been killed in the conflict and 11 million made homeless in the world’s worst refugee crisis.”

Seventy-three agencies aiding civilians in Syria cut ties with the United Nations last week, alleging that the UN was willingly being manipulated by Assad’s government, which was directing the aid to government forces and government-controlled areas.

After Sunnis have evacuated areas besieged by the regime and allied forces, Iraqi militias aligned with Iran are helping facilitate the strategic movement of Shi’ite civilians to replace them, Hanin Ghaddar of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy reported last week.

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