Deliveries came to a halt after an air strike hit a convoy of Syrian Arab Red Crescent trucks in northwestern Syria Monday night.
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Syrian government forces have been accused of carrying out “double tap” attacks throughout the 5-1/2 year war, placing paramedics and rescue workers in peril.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group, said the initial raid killed nine medical staff affiliated with the Army of Conquest rebel alliance.
“The best evaluation we have is that the Russians carried out the strike”, he added, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“There only could have been two entities responsible, either the Syrian regime or the Russian government”, deputy US national security adviser Ben Rhodes said Tuesday.
The airstrike on a Syrian Arab Red Crescent convoy Monday night prompted worldwide condemnation over attacks targeting humanitarian facilities and workers.
“We are at a make or break moment”, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon told the council, urging world powers to use their influence to help restart political talks so Syrians can “negotiate a way out of the hell in which they are trapped”.
In a U.N. Security Council session originally envisioned to enshrine Syria’s September 9 truce, world powers rued the possibility of a darker phase in the conflict amid increased attacks on humanitarian workers.
The U.S. initially said it believed Russian or Syrian government jets were behind the attack on the aid convoy.
Responsibility for the attack is disputed, and US and Russian officials have spent the days since trading blame.
Moscow denied that Russian or Syrian aircraft were behind the attack, saying there was a fire in the cargo.
But there had been three different reactions from Russian Federation, including a suggestion from the Ministry of Defence that the goods in the convoys had caught fire and spontaneously combusted.
The Russian Defense Ministry said a U.S. Predator drone was in the area just minutes before the Monday incident.
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. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and his counterpart Sergey Lavrov exchanged blame in a public session on Syria at the U.N. Security Council. The Syrian military declared Monday night the truce had expired, shortly before presumed Russian or Syrian government jets launched a sustained aerial attack on Aleppo’s opposition-held neighborhoods.
Russian Federation decided that aid to the enemies of the regime it is trying to prop up in Syria should not be allowed to reach its destination, so it destroyed the aid convoy. Syrians living in opposition areas will be disproportionately affected because the U.N.’s major warehouses are located in government-held areas. Syria’s rebels do not operate an air force.
“Somebody is trying to tell us humanitarian workers are not welcome in Syria, that we are a target, that we will be killed”, he said.
Seven civilians, including three children, were also killed in unidentified air raids on the northwestern town of Khan Sheikhun Wednesday, according to the Observatory.
On Wednesday, heavy bombardment pummelled Aleppo city and the wider province, key battlegrounds in Syria’s conflict.
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Separately, a Syrian warplane has crashed north of Damascus, the UK-based Syrian Observatory says.
