AKIPRESS.COM - The United States, Russia and Jordan have reached a ceasefire and "de-escalation agreement" in southwestern Syria, one of the combat zones in a six-year-old civil war, Reuters said.

The ceasefire will go into effect on Sunday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Jordan's Petra news agency said.

The deal was announced after a meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin at the G20 summit of major economies in the German city of Hamburg.

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the area covered by the ceasefire affects Jordan’s security and is a “very complicated part of the Syrian battlefield.”

Russia and Iran are the main international backers of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad while Washington supports some of the rebel groups fighting for his ouster.

“I think this is our first indication of the U.S. and Russia being able to work together in Syria, and as a result of that we had a very lengthy discussion regarding other areas in Syria that we can continue to work together on to de-escalate the areas," Tillerson said.

The Syrian conflict has killed nearly half a million people, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, destroyed cities and forced millions of others to flee the country.

Backed by Russian air power, Assad has regained ground in the last year or so that he lost to the mostly Sunni Muslim rebels earlier in the war.

The Syria deal appeared to be the main point of agreement at the first meeting between Trump and Putin, who also discussed Moscow's alleged interference in the U.S. 2016 presidential election and North Korea's nuclear ambitions.