The United States and Russia struck a deal for a ceasefire in southwest Syria on Friday as the country's respective presidents held their first bilateral talks, U.S. officials said.
The ceasefire is scheduled to begin at noon Damascus time on Sunday, although details about the arrangement and how it will be implemented were not immediately available, the Associated Press reports:
Jordan and Israel also are part of the agreement, one of the officials said. The two U.S. allies both share a border with the southern part of Syria and have been concerned about violence from Syria's civil war spilling over the border.
The deal is separate from "de-escalation zones" that were to be created under a deal brokered by Russia, Turkey, and Iran earlier this year. The U.S. was not a part of that deal. Follow-up talks this week in Kazakhstan to finalize a cease-fire in those zones failed to reach agreement.
Previous cease-fires in Syria have collapsed or failed to reduce violence for long, and it was unclear whether this deal would be any better.
Another U.S. official confirmed the ceasefire deal to Reuters, adding that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was expected to provide more details of the agreement to the press later on Friday.
The deal was reported as U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin held their highly anticipated bilateral meeting at the G-20 summit in Hamburg, Germany on Friday. Their discussion lasted more than two hours.
Syria is one of many points of tension between the two nations, with the Kremlin backing the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the U.S. supporting anti-Assad rebels.
Trump ignored questions from reporters Friday about whether he would press Putin about Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, which the three top U.S. intelligence agencies and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence agree occurred.
This story is developing and will be updated as more information becomes available.