Banners read in Arabic: “Hunger better than humiliation, ‘ one banner read”. Syria’s military command has declared the U.S-Russian brokered cease-fire over, blaming the rebel groups for undermining it.
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The US-Russia truce deal had been billed as the best chance to put an end to more than five years of conflict, in which more than 300,000 people have been killed.
The UN aid chief Stephen O’Brien said if the “callous attack” was found to be deliberate it would amount to a war crime.
The brother of an aid worker who was killed when an aid convoy was attacked in Syria said the Red Crescent staffer was overseeing the unloading of trucks when a bomb hit the warehouse, killing him inside his vehicle.
It said a SARC warehouse was also hit and a SARC health clinic was reported to have been badly damaged. The relief convoy was delivering medical and food aid to 78,000 people in rural Aleppo province.
The ministry said it had “closely studied” video from the apparent scene of the attack taken by “so-called activists” and said it saw no evidence that the aid convoy was hit by an ammunition strike.
At least 18 trucks in the 31-vehicle convoy were struck in the attack that left 12 aid workers and drivers dead, according to early report.
In his final address to the annual gathering of world leaders at the United Nations, Ban said the Syrian government “continues to barrel bomb neighborhoods and systematically torture thousands of detainees”.
The United Nations has suspended all aid convoy movements in Syria after the air strike.
An AFP correspondent in Aleppo reported that the northern city was being pummelled.
Russian Federation and Syria said the strikes prove Washington and its allies are sympathetic to ISIS, which they say was able to briefly capture a Syrian position in the wake of the coalition attack. But a week after the ceasefire began, desperate populations in besieged areas are yet to receive this aid, which has been held up on the Turkish border as humanitarian agencies await guarantees of safety from the warring parties.
“For more than a week, we have urged Moscow to fulfill the commitments it made in Geneva to facilitate the unimpeded flow of humanitarian aid to the Syrian people”, the statement said.
While Arab, European and other officials waited, Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov met in a NY hotel hoping to quickly iron out some of the many differences between Washington and Moscow. Under terms of the agreement, the successful completion of seven days of calm and humanitarian aid deliveries would be followed by an ambitious second-stage plan to set up a joint U.S. -Russian military partnership against Islamic State militants and al-Qaida, once envisioned to start Tuesday. One managed to reach its destination in Homs, delivering aid to 80,000 people.
Lavrov’s ministry on Monday blamed rebels for violating the truce and threatening U.S.
“Considering that the conditions of the ceasefire are not being respected by the rebels, we consider it pointless for the Syrian government forces to respect it unilaterally”, said Lieutenant General Sergei Rudskoy. Present in this hall today are representatives of governments that have ignored, facilitated, funded, participated in or even planned and carried out atrocities inflicted by all sides of the Syria conflict against Syrian civilians.
By Monday, both the Syrian government and prominent opposition activists were speaking of the truce as if it had already failed.
Ibrahim Alhaj told The Associated Press on Tuesday that Syrian civilians will pay the price for the decision.
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Laerke added that the temporary suspension of the aid deliveries would hold pending a review of the security situation in Syria.
