The US has expressed “outrage” over an attack on an aid convoy near the Syrian city of Aleppo that, a monitoring group says, left 12 civilians dead.
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“For now that is all we can confirm, the director of the sub-branch (of SARC Urem al-Kubra) who has been killed”, Benoit Carpentier, spokesman of the International Federation of the Red Crescent and Red Cresecent Societies, told a Geneva news briefing.
“The situation on the spot is very chaotic and we are deeply shocked that humanitarian workers and missions have yet again suffered from the brutality of this conflict”, ICRC spokeswoman Ingy Sedky told AFP.
“The Russians need to control Assad, who evidently is indiscriminately bombing”.
United Nations aid chief Stephen O’Brien said: “Let me be clear: if this callous attack is found to be a deliberate targeting of humanitarians, it would amount to a war crime”. Residents of opposition-run eastern Aleppo reported new airstrikes Monday night in their besieged areas.
“It started with an hour of extremely fierce bombing”, said Besher Hawi, the former spokesman for the opposition’s Aleppo city council. “Now I hear warplanes”.
Abu al-Baraa al-Hamawi, a rebel commander, said the most intense bombardments had taken place in areas west of Aleppo, the same area where the aid convoy was hit.
“The Russians have the responsibility to refrain from taking such actions themselves, but they also have the responsibility to keep the regime from doing it”, one said.
Kerry, Lavrov and ministers from the 23-nation ISSG are to meet Tuesday alongside the UN General Assembly in NY to decide what steps to take next for peace.
But like the Syrian army, the rebels spoke of returning to the battlefield.
U. N. Humanitarian Chief Stephen O’Brien called on “all parties to the conflict, once again, to take all necessary measures to protect humanitarian actors, civilians, and civilian infrastructure as required by global humanitarian law”.
“There was no ceasefire to begin with for us to say whether it failed or succeeded”, Riad Hijab, general coordinator of the High Negotiations Committee, told reporters.
“We had something planned in the four towns, but for now it is put on hold to reassess the security conditions”, he said, referring to rebel-besieged Foua and Kefraya in Idlib and government-blockaded Madaya and Zabadani near the Lebanese border.
The convoy brought in food, water and hygiene supplies for up to 84,000 people, it said.
Syria’s military is also denying it was behind airstrikes that hit an aid convoy in northern Syria, killing more than a dozen people the night before.
The United Nations said it had received government approval to reach almost all the besieged and hard-to-reach areas where it sought to bring aid, but access to many areas was still constrained by fighting, insecurity and administrative delays.
The attack late on Monday came just hours after the Syrian military declared the week-long U.S. He called the airstrike “a unsafe incident, considering major doubts with regard to Washington’s true intentions”. Washington called it a mistake.
The strike and renewed violence across the country dimmed hopes that the fraught ceasefire negotiated by Moscow and Washington could be revived.
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Sirens wailed as ambulances zipped through the eastern half of the divided city, an AFP correspondent reported. But the armed terrorist groups didnt take it seriously and didnt commit to any of its articles, the military command statement said.
