“I think there has been a moment of shock and frankly disgust by this attack”, Laerke said. “If this had been a military position, it wouldn’t have been targeted with such intensity”.
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At least 20 civilians and one Red Cross staff member died in the strike Monday in the outskirts of Aleppo – threatening a fragile truce that began on September 12.
But Rhodes refused to say whether the convoy strike was the final nail in the coffin of the agreement. The U.S. said its pilots believed they were targeting Islamic State fighters, and the Obama administration apologized to the Assad regime.
Mr. Kerry’s optimism was at odds with that of the Syrian and Russian governments: The former declared the cease-fire over, and the latter said its prospects were “very weak”. He says the strike came from a helicopter, which dropped a number of barrel bombs. He and other witnesses reported seeing a reconnaissance aircraft observing the convoy before the attack. “We were able to pull out four survivors and five dead bodies at first”, Badawi said.
The UN and Red Crescent spoke of relentless air strikes they were powerless to stop. “The target was the Red Crescent, central and direct”.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitor of the war, said clashes took place between the army and rebels in the Jobar district of Damascus and areas northeast of the capital, after the army tried to advance.
Witnesses said some of the remains were charred beyond recognition. The bombing killed around 20 civilians as well as the director of the Red Crescent’s Urum al-Kubra branch, Omar Barakat.
Russia’s military also sought to discount the account of activists who presented video evidence of the attack.
The UN has suspended all aid missions in the beleaguered nation after 21 people died in what UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called a “sickening, savage and apparently deliberate attack” on vehicles delivering aid.
He added: “Just when you think it can not get any worse, the bar of depravity sinks lower”. “The aid convoy successfully reached the destination”.
Still, Rhodes said the USA wasn’t yet willing to “walk away from the table” despite the airstrike on the aid convoy that was “completely contrary to and in violation of that agreement”.
Jan Egeland, humanitarian aid coordinator in the office of the United Nations envoy for Syria, told The Associated Press in a text message that the convoy was “bombarded”.
The Russian Defence Ministry said neither Russian nor Syrian war planes were responsible, arguing the convoy’s whereabouts had only been known to militants on the ground.
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Inside the trucks was sanitation and nutritional supplies for 50,000 people, nine tonnes of medical aid, including antibiotics and surgical materials, according to UNICEF and the World Health Organization.
