As are those leading them, especially Syrian President Bashar Assad and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
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The White House is pushing back on Syrian President Bashar Assad’s claim that the US responsible for the collapse of the cease-fire.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad indicated he saw no quick end to the war, telling the Associated Press it would “drag on” as long as it is part of a global conflict in which terrorists are backed by Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and the United States. Russian Federation denied involvement. Prior to that, tensions between Washington and Moscow spiked over a lethal air strike on Syrian government troops by the USA -led coalition against DAESH.
Here’s a closer look at his statements and the facts surrounding them.
Washington in turn accused Russian jets of carrying out a deadly strike on a United Nations aid convoy on Monday, and Kerry and Lavrov exchanged angry words at the Security Council.
An AFP correspondent in the rebel-held east of Aleppo witnessed a dozen families fleeing the Soukkari district for other rebel areas further north. The only thing that we saw was a video of a burnt vehicle, destroyed trucks, nothing else.
He called for the immediate grounding of planes and helicopters that have launched airstrikes, including a Russian one earlier this week that the US says hit an aid convoy, killing 20 civilians. She added that many reports from Aleppo that night said there was “heavy bombardment by Syrian warplanes and their Russian allies”.
“The planes have not left the city’s skies and the bombing is continuous and indiscriminate”, said one activist in eastern Aleppo. The attack began after nightfall as staffers loaded trucks.
“What did they achieve in Syria?” he said. The rebels have no aircraft. “We don’t attack any hospitals”, he told the Associated Press. The sound of aircraft overhead is clearly heard. Footage filmed by rescuers showed torn flesh being picked from the wreckage.
US Secretary of State John Kerry met his Russian counterpart Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Thursday for a crisis meeting of governments with a stake in the Syrian civil war. “It’s a direct strike on its foundation”, he said. “We are not saying what it was”.
The truce declared September 12 has been on the verge of collapse amid fighting around Aleppo and an attack on a humanitarian convoy. “I would only give a prize to whoever works for the peace in Syria”. The strike on 18 of 31 aid trucks immediately killed at least 12.
“We can’t go out to the world and say we have an agreement when we don’t”, Secretary of State John Kerry said after meeting the top diplomats from Russian Federation and more than a dozen European and Middle Eastern countries.
FACTS: Few independently confirmed details of Saturday’s strike have emerged. The top USA military official told Congress he thought grounding all warplanes was a bad idea and Russia’s deputy foreign minister said grounding the flights would make matters worse. Britain, Denmark and Australia have since acknowledged that their planes took part in the airstrike.
State Department spokesman John Kirby says “it’s hard to see how these ridiculous claims deserve a response, except to say they prove yet again the degree to which Assad has lost his legitimacy to govern”.
The Syrian government controls about 40 percent of Deir el-Zour city while the Islamic State group controls the rest of the city and the surrounding province.
Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said these were “the most intense strikes in months”, while opposition activists accused the Syrian government and its ally Russian Federation of dropping “incendiary phosphorous bombs”.
The U.N. has accused Assad’s government of obstructing aid access to the city, despite an agreement to allow aid in during the weeklong cease-fire that ended Monday.
Staffan de Mistura, the UN Syria envoy, called the meeting “long, painful, difficult, and disappointing”.
United Nations officials have often complained in the past of blocked aid deliveries. How can we prevent the food and the medical aid from reaching that area and we cannot stop the armaments form reaching that area, which is not logical?.
Aleppo has been a battlefield since July 2012.
The complete siege is more recent. How could they be starving while at the same time they can have armaments?
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An estimated 75,000 residents are still in the neighborhood, with dwindling supplies of food and medicine. Rebel reinforcements broke a hole in the blockade in August. It included a nationwide truce, improved humanitarian aid access and the possibility of joint military targeting of banned Islamist groups. Of those, 293 were carried out by government forces and 16 were by Russian warplanes, it said.
