Syrian President Bashar Assad at the presidential palace in Damascus.
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In an interview, Assad also said deadly United States airstrikes on Syrian troops last week were intentional, dismissing American officials’ statements that they were an accident, adding the USA lacked “the will” to join forces with Russian Federation in fighting extremists.
The fragile ceasefire that went into effect on September 12 fell apart less than a week later after US-led coalition forces struck a Syrian position, killing scores of soldiers.
The Syrian war has entered its sixth year, and the latest U.S. -Russia brokered cessation of hostilities collapsed this week. It was four airplanes that kept attacking the position of the Syrian troops for almost one hour, or a little bit more than one hour.
Bashar al-Assad has denied his forces are besieging the rebel-held areas of Aleppo, stating that “people would dead by now” and insisting they had “everything” they needed. “You don’t commit a mistake for more than one hour”.
Assad tells AP that deadly USA airstrikes on Syrian troops last week were intentional, dismissing American officials’ statements that they were an accident.
America said the intended target had been Islamic State forces in the area. “Everybody sits there and says we want a united Syria, secular, respecting the rights of all people, in which the people of Syria can choose their leadership, but we are proving woefully inadequate in our ability to be able to get to the table and have that conversation and make it happen”. “It was four airplanes”, Assad said. However, as NPR’s Alison Meuse reported, an eyewitness said that “the attack consisted of helicopters and warplanes”. It was one of scores of airstrikes, the most in months, and it proved a thundering, brutal answer to Secretary of State John Kerry’s plea for the Syrian military and its Russian allies to ground their jets.
The US military did not dispute the strike, but characterized it as “unintentional” and relayed its “regret” to Syria through Russian Federation. “We don’t kill civilians, because we don’t have the moral incentive, we don’t have the interest to kill civilians”, he said.
The UN has estimated that roughly 600,000 people are stuck in Syria’s 18 besieged areas.
Throughout the conflict, Assad’s forces have been accused of bombing hospitals and civilians and choking opposition-held cities. “A recent joint investigation by the United Nations and the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons found at least two occasions when government forces used weaponized chlorine”, as Alice reported.
In response to questions about the suffering of the people of Aleppo, he said: “We can not say “the people of Aleppo” because the majority live under the control of the government”. However, as The Guardian has reported, aid organizations “are refusing to share Global Positioning System coordinates with Russian and Syrian authorities because of repeated attacks on medical facilities and workers”.
Millions have fled Syria, some of them drowning at sea in the Mediterranean in a bid to seek refuge in Europe.
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Nusra and Islamic State are the two terrorist groups excluded from the truce in Syria, and the United States and Russian Federation are supposed to be cooperating to defeat them. “I am not anxious about this”. That’s what they should accuse first: “the people or the militants, the terrorists who are responsible for the security of this convoy”, Assad said.
