Russia’s foreign ministry spokeswoman denied the assertion, telling reporters at the United Nations the U.S. administration “has no facts” to support the claim, adding: “We have nothing to do with this situation”.
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The airstrike on a Syrian Arab Red Crescent convoy Monday night prompted global condemnation over attacks targeting humanitarian facilities and workers. He recited Moscow’s changing narrative over a deadly attack this week on an aid convoy that has included everything from claims of a justifiable counterterror strike to vehicles spontaneously combusting. The U.N. suspended aid deliveries after a strike on a humanitarian convoy this week.
“It was certainly not the coalition who struck from the air; it does look like an airstrike”, he said, adding “the only other entities that fly in Syria are Russian Federation and Syria”.
The Foreign Secretary said Russian Federation and Syria were the only two potential “culprits” and the United Kingdom had “doubts” that Syria would be able to carry out such a strike at night.
Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov told reporters that a preliminary assessment indicated the convoy caught fire rather than being hit by mortar shells.
He also said that a U.S. Predator drone was in the area and had appeared on the scene minutes before the incident but added that “we aren’t jumping to conclusions”.
Russian Federation denies responsibility – giving explanations including blaming a mortar attack by militants, and fires inside the trucks.
State TV, quoting an unnamed military official, says the pilot has been rescued but doesn’t say what caused the plane to crash in the Qalamoun mountains, an area that straddles the border with Lebanon.
Kerry focused on its shifting explanation of what might have happened.
He says the drone left the area about a half-hour after the attack.
Fierce fighting rocked the Ramussa district on the southwestern outskirts where the rebels briefly opened a relief line last month, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
A former US Ambassador to Syria has dismissed suggestions the convoy could have been targeted in retaliation for the killings at Deir al Zor, suggesting Syria’s aim is to block aid from getting to Aleppo.
“This is not a joke”, Kerry exclaimed, urging all to stop the “word games that duck responsibility or avoid the choices … with respect to war and peace, life and death”.
A partial truce brokered by the U.S. and Russian Federation lasted just a week.
It’s not hard to see what happened here.
Officials are now saying the US has gathering enough intelligence to say that it was Russian Federation, not Syria, that launched the airstrike. “These are war crimes by all means”, Zoabi said.
Here’s video of Kerry at the UN.
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“How can people go sit at a table with a regime that bombs hospitals and drops chlorine gas again and again and again and again and again and acts with impunity”, Kerry asked.
