Speaking earlier about Monday’s attack on the aid convoy, U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said two Russian SU-24 attack aircraft were in the sky above the convoy at the precise moment it was hit in Urum al-Kubra.
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White House deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes said Tuesday that whether Russian Federation or Syria struck the convoy, the US held Russian Federation responsible, because it was Russia’s job under the week-old cease-fire to prevent Syria’s air force from striking in areas where humanitarian aid was being transported.
The Union of Syrian Medical Relief Organisations (UOSSM) said the clinic in the village of Khan Tuman was completely levelled in the 11pm (2000 GMT) strike and more dead were feared to be buried under the rubble, the group added.
An attack on Monday night in Aleppo province on a warehouse of the Red Crescent where United Nations aid was delivered that day killed 20 people and destroyed most of the delivery.
The strike came hours after the Syrian government declared an end to a ceasefire agreement brokered by Russian Federation and the Unites States.
The latest horror came as tension between the United States and Russian Federation escalated, with Moscow claiming it was not behind Monday’s bombing of an aid convoy in which 20 civilians died.
A US and Russian-brokered cease-fire that went into effect nine days ago is on the brink of collapse, with the government and the rebels alleging dozens of violations.
The Russian government also said on Wednesday that neither Russian nor Syrian forces had struck the convoy, and that the destruction of the convoy’s vehicles was “the direct effect of the cargo catching fire”.
Damaged Red Cross and Red Crescent medical supplies inside a warehouse after an airstrike on the rebel-held town of Urm al-Kubra in Syria.
As part of the ceasefire Russian Federation had taken responsibility for the regime’s compliance and if it transpires that Syrian aircraft carried out the raid the U.S. would still hold Moscow responsible. The International Committee of the Red Cross said the strike killed about 20 civilians, mostly truck drivers and Red Crescent workers.
On Wednesday, a Russian military spokesman said a Predator drone from the US-led coalition had entered the area where the attack had taken place “several minutes before it burst into flames”.
It said two of its ambulances, which are run by UOSSM and the World Health Organization, were destroyed and the three-story building collapsed.
Secretary of State John Kerry speaks during a Security Council Meeting on Wednesday.
The bombing was initially blamed on either Russian Federation or Syria’s Assad regime.
The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that aid workers had been killed in an “aerial bombardment”.
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The strike, they added, was too sophisticated to have been carried out by the Syrian army. The pilot was rescued, according to an unnamed military official quoted on state TV. IS shot down a government aircraft on Sunday in the eastern Deir el-Zour province.
