Omar Barakat – the Syrian Arab Red Crescent’s director in Urum al-Kubra – was the staff member killed at the warehouse, ICRC Middle East public relations officer Krista Armstrong told CNN. Such deliveries began only on Monday and were available only in limited areas, he said.
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The coalition’s weekend attack killed 62 Syrian soldiers.
The President of the Syrian Red Crescent, Abdulrahman Attar, called father-of-nine Omar Barakat “a committed and courageous member” of the group.
The White Helmets first responder group posted images of a number of vehicles on fire and a video of the attack showed huge balls of fire in a pitch black area, as ambulances arrive on the scene.
He accuses Syrian and Russian aircraft of taking part in an attack that lasted more than two hours, covering a 100 yard-radius.
State Department spokesman John Kirby said after the convoy attack that the U.S.
Konashenkov remarks on Tuesday were reported by the state news agency Tass.
“And for more than a week, the Syrian regime repeatedly denied entry to these United Nations convoys, preventing them from delivering urgent food, water and medical supplies to desperate Syrian citizens”.
He says that “everything shown on the video is the direct effect of the cargo catching fire, and this began in a unusual way simultaneously with militants carrying out a massive offensive in Aleppo”.
United Nations peace envoy Staffan de Mistura said all participants reconfirmed support for the truce, even if Assad’s military and the rebels weren’t always respecting it.
The convoy was part of a routine interagency dispatch operated by the Syrian Red Crescent.
Russia’s Defense Ministry is denying that Russian warplanes or those of the Syrian government conducted the deadly airstrikes that targeted an aid convoy in northern Syria the previous night. Russia’s Foreign Ministry said the failure of Syrian rebels to adhere to the truce “threatens the cease-fire and U.S”.
Abdurrahman said the convoy of about 30 trucks had crossed earlier from a government-controlled area and were hit from the air hours after they reached the Red Crescent warehouse. Tuesday’s meeting wasn’t followed by any immediate statement. ICRC President Peter Maurer said the attack was a “flagrant violation of worldwide humanitarian law” and “totally unacceptable”. “The cease-fire is in danger, is being seriously affected”, he said, but only the USA and Russian Federation could declare it over.
The State Department initially said it was ready to work with Russian Federation to strengthen terms of the agreement and expand deliveries of humanitarian aid and Mr Kirby called on Russian Federation, which is responsible for ensuring Syria’s compliance, to clarify the Syrian position.
When asked who was behind the airstrikes, Rami Abdurrahman of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said Syrian President Bashar Assad’s “regime does not have the capabilities to carry out such airstrikes within two hours”.
Spokesman Jens Laerke of OCHA says the temporary suspension of the aid deliveries would hold pending a review of the security situation in Syria.
Despite the setback, the State Department said it was prepared to extend the cease-fire window in the hopes that if it held, the US and Russian Federation could then turn to their planned military cooperation against the Islamic State militants and al-Qaida-linked groups in Syria. -Russian brokered cease-fire had failed.
The United States has supported and armed what it considers moderate rebels in Syria fighting militants groups such as ISIS, while Russian Federation has supported the Syrian regime and considers all rebel groups “terrorists”.
Syria’s cease-fire has faltered further after an aid convoy was hit by airstrikes, with activists saying at least 12 people were killed in the attack, mostly truck drivers and Red Crescent workers.
It was not clear who was behind the attack late on Monday, which sent a red fireball into the sky in the dead of night over a rural area in Aleppo province.
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Tuesday’s gathering, led by Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, aimed to hold on to what might be salvageable from Syria’s week-old truce on a day the pair once envisioned as the start of a new military partnership against the Islamic State group and al-Qaida. Initial estimates indicated that at least 18 of the 31 lorries in the convoy were hit.
