Two Russian Sukhoi SU-24 warplanes were in the skies above the aid convoy at the exact time it was struck late on Monday, two U.S. officials said, citing USA intelligence that led them to conclude Russia was to blame.
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U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said he is confident of reaching the magic number of 55 percent before the next United Nations climate conference, which starts November 7 in Marrakech, Morocco.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called the attack – savage, sickening and apparently deliberate.
US Secretary of State John Kerry, speaking alongside his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov, insisted the cessation of hostilities deal was “not dead”, following talks with delegates of the Syria Support Group. Twenty people were killed in the attack on Monday, further shaking a days-old cease-fire in the Syrian civil war that was already crumbling.
Separately, an air strike hit a medical centre near Aleppo on Tuesday night local time, killing four medics working for the Union of Medical Care and Relief Organizations (UOSSM), the group said.
They were in two ambulances that had been called to the clinic in the village of Khan Tuman to take patients for more specialised treatment, according to the USMRO.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said Syrian or Russian warplanes carried out the raid and that it also killed nine rebel fighters from the Islamist alliance Jaish al-Fatah.
The barrage of strikes quieted after rain broke over the city around dawn.
“There was no one in the building except for two brothers”. “We hold the Russian government responsible for the airstrikes”.
Meanwhile, diplomats in NY were trying to save a week-old truce agreement brokered by the United States and Russian Federation which was declared over by Syrian military hours before the incident.
The U.N. Security Council was due to hold a high-level meeting on Syria later on Wednesday.
Russian Federation denies it was responsible and says that terrorists carried out the attack, saying that analysis of drone footage of the strike showed that militants were following the convoy. “There only could have been two entities responsible, either the Syrian regime or the Russian government”, President Barack Obama’s national security spokesman Ben Rhodes said. The Kremlin has denied responsibility for the strike.
The Reuters news agency meanwhile reported that two Russian Sukhoi SU-24 warplanes were in the skies above the aid convoy at the time of the attack. It is not clear who carried out the air strike.
The Russian foreign ministry said the “unsubstantiated, hasty accusations” seemed created to “distract attention from the unusual “error” of coalition pilots”. Both say they’re committed to fighting the Islamic State and al-Qaida.
Despite the tensions, Kerry insisted that efforts to salvage the truce were “not dead”, after a short meeting of the 23-nation International Syria Support Group (ISSG) in NY, where world leaders have gathered for the UN General Assembly.
Moscow says the convoy was not hit from the air and has implied rebels were to blame, saying only rescue workers affiliated to the opposition knew what had happened.
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Moscow backs Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government, while Washington supports numerous rebel factions fighting to topple him.
