The deadly incident came hours after the Syrian military declared an end to a week-long truce brokered by the Moscow and Washington earlier this month in an attempt to end the five-year war.
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“However we remain committed to stay and deliver to everybody in need in Syria”, he added.
United Nations 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”. “If intentional character of such attacks is established, Switzerland reminds that they are war crimes”.
“Yesterday’s attack is a flagrant violation of global humanitarian law and it is unacceptable”, Peter Maurer, president of the worldwide Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said in a statement.
“All those with a conscience must condemn the attack on a humanitarian convoy in Aleppo that killed and injured humanitarian workers. Failing to respect and protect humanitarian workers and structures might have serious repercussions on ongoing humanitarian operations in the country, hence depriving millions of people from aid essential to their survival”, said Peter Maurer, the ICRC President. The director of the SARC-Orem branch, Omar Barakat, was also killed in the strike. Both Syrian and Russian aircraft operate over Syria, as well as the USA -led coalition that is targeting the Islamic State group.
No person or group had yet claimed responsibility for the convoy attack, officials said. “It is high time to de-link humanitarian work from politics”, Mardini said. That seemed unlikely after the convoy attack. “Russia has the burden of demonstrating very quickly their seriousness of goal … otherwise, there will be nothing to salvage”.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said hope for a renewal of the ceasefire was “for now, very weak”, stressing that a truce could only be resumed if “terrorists” halted their fire.
But U.S. Secretary of State John F. Kerry insisted that “the cease-fire is not dead”. Syria has been gripped by foreign-backed militancy since March 2011.
Referring to the monitoring drone footage, which was released on Tuesday, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov noted that a militant pickup truck with a large caliber mortar can be clearly seen in the footage. The strike appeared to deal a fatal blow to Syria’s fragile week-old cease-fire.
“We have seen nothing since last night that would tell us that it wasn’t” an airstrike, a senior administration official here said.
Ban singled out Assad’s government, which he said continues to barrel bomb neighborhoods and torture thousands of detainees.
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He appealed to all those with influence over the combatants to get talks started.
