A UN and Syrian Arab Red Crescent convoy was struck while delivering aid in Syria’s Aleppo governorate, UN Secretary-General’s deputy spokesperson Farhan Haq told Sputnik on Monday.
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Syria’s fragile cease-fire started to unravel on Sunday with the first aerial attacks on opposition-held neighborhoods of Aleppo and a southern village that killed at least eight people, violations that came as tensions between the American and Russian brokers of the deal worsened following a deadly US strike on the Bashar al-Assad forces.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry sits with President Beji Caid Essebsi of Tunisia during a bilateral meeting Monday, Sept. 19, 2016, in NY.
Russian planes have supported the regime’s air force in hitting hospitals and refugee camps, she said, before going on to accuse the regime of “bombing in defiance of the cessation of hostilities”. United Nations spokesman Sté phane Dujarric said two convoys were hit, and said the United Nations would release further details soon.
“Terrorist groups did not adhere to any of the points of the agreement”, the Syrian army said in a statement. “We have not had seven days of calm and of delivery of humanitarian goods”, Kerry said. A volunteer with the Red Crescent says the aid convoy with United Nations participation was hit in Uram al-Kubra.
More than 30 trucks from the Syrian Arab Red Crescent were reportedly bringing food relief from United Nations stores to the town of Urm al-Kabra, near Aleppo, in an area controlled by rebel groups. The British-based Observatory said the trucks had made a routine aid delivery organised by an global organisation to an area west of Aleppo city. -Russian coordination center to plan military strikes against the Islamic State group and a powerful al-Qaida-linked militant faction.
The U.N. said the Syrian government has obstructed the delivery of aid, a key component of the deal. “The armed terrorist groups took advantage of the declared truce system and mobilized terrorists and weapons and regrouped to continue its attacks on civilian and military areas”.
The French foreign minister, Jean-Marc Ayrault, has said the breakdown of the ceasefire was instigated by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s troops, supported by Russian Federation – and not the fault of Western-backed opposition rebels.
The aid convoy was part of a routine dispatch from government-held Aleppo to rural rebel-held parts of the province.
By Monday, both the Syrian government and prominent opposition activists were speaking of the truce as if it had already failed.
Syria’s nascent ceasefire hung in the balance Monday after an airstrike on a United Nations aid convoy led the U.S. to question Russia’s commitment to calming violence in the war-torn country and its ability to influence its ally in Damascus.
The Saturday air strikes involved Australian, British and Danish warplanes on Syrian army positions.
“It was never committed to by Russian forces or [President Bashar al-Assad’s] regime”, he said.
“The UK would not intentionally target Syrian military units”.
Since September 12, 27 civilians, including nine children, have been killed in areas where the truce had been set to take hold, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
Aid deliveries to the besieged eastern districts of Aleppo have not reached their destination.
“With the rebels failing to fulfil conditions the ceasefire agreement, we consider its unilateral observance by the Syrian government forces meaningless”, he said.
The current tensions come on the heels of the weekend air strike by the US-led coalition on Syrian army positions near Deir el-Zour.
A Red Crescent official in Syria confirmed the attack, but said no further information was available.
One unconfirmed report said 12 people were killed in the attack near the town of Urm al-Kubra.
The figure does not include dozens of Syrian soldiers and Islamic State militants killed in the eastern province of Deir el-Zour, the Observatory said on Monday.
The Syrian army said in a statement last week that the truce will last until midnight Sunday.
Australia also participated in the strikes and the Australian Department of Defence offered its condolences to the families of Syrian soldiers killed or wounded in the incident. “The convoy was the outcome of long process of permission and preparations to assist isolated civilians”.
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The US-Russian deal, whose details are still secret, calls for the eventual joint US-Russian targeting of jihadists including Islamic State and the former Syrian branch of al Qaeda.
