Despite extensive evidence to the contrary, Assad repeatedly denied that his forces were besieging opposition-held eastern Aleppo, which has become a symbol both of resistance and also the high price civilians are paying in the war.
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Syrian President Bashar Assad says US airstrikes on Syrian troops in the country’s east were “definitely intentional”, lasting for an hour, and blamed the USA for the collapse of a cease-fire deal brokered with Russian Federation.
The United States and Russian Federation are taking their differences over the conflict in Syria to new heights, after trading ferocious allegations of duplicity and malfeasance at the United Nations Security Council in NY. The Syrian government announced Monday that it was unilaterally ending the cease-fire, as we reported. “I don’t believe the USA will be ready to join Russian Federation in fighting terrorists in Syria. the United States is not genuine regarding having a cessation of violence in Syria”. This does not seem as though it would be anything but an attack from the air.
The most recent deadly escalation came after a rare moment of hope: an ad hoc cease-fire negotiated between the USA and Russian Federation that was to allow a week for humanitarian aid to reach war-ravaged Aleppo, as well as to possibly pave a path for joint U.S.
During the weeklong truce, there was a lull in violence rather than a halt. USA officials said the attack – its first direct hit on Syrian forces since the civil war began – was accidental and that the warplanes thought they were targeting Islamic State group positions.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who met Wednesday night with his Russian counterpart, will attend today’s meeting of the International Syria Support Group, as will Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, setting up a potential confrontation between the top diplomats for the two powers. Assad said in his interview he believed the strikes, which he said lasted over an hour, were deliberate. “You don’t commit a mistake for more than one hour”.
Ministers from the 23-nation International Syria Support Group (ISSG) gathered at a NY hotel for the second time in three days to seek a way to revive a ceasefire and an eventual political resolution to the conflict.
Aleppo has seen some of the bitterest fighting in recent months, including the recent bombing of a United Nations convoy that killed at least 12 aid workers and 20 civilians. “We don’t have any idea about what happened”.
Syria’s military command for Aleppo says it is commencing operations in the contested city’s rebel-held eastern quarters. However, as NPR’s Alison Meuse reported, an eyewitness said that “the attack consisted of helicopters and warplanes”.
In the village of Khan Tuman, south of Aleppo city, two nurses and two drivers were killed in an attack on two ambulances, the Union of Syrian Medical Relief Organizations said.
He said: “When you talk about it as part of a global conflict and a regional conflict, when you have many external factors that you don’t control, it’s going to drag on”. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition-leaning monitoring group, put the number at 300,000 confirmed deaths, one-third of which are civilians, as NPR’s Alice Fordham reported.
She added that “another monitor found that in one six-month period at the beginning of 2015, the regime killed almost 8,000 civilians”.
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Asked about his methods, including the use of indiscriminate weapons, Assad said: “When you have terrorists, you don’t throw at them balloons, or you don’t use rubber sticks”. -Russian cease-fire deal, but once again illustrated why they’ve been unable for more than five years to stop Syria’s civil war.
