“That is why, even now, we will continue to look for any way possible to restore the cessation of hostilities”, Power said.
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Meanwhile, New Zealand’s representative in New Yor, Carolyn Schwalger, has told the United Nations of “utter dismay” at the latest attack on Aleppo. Power told an emergency security council meeting on the same day that the USA regretted the attack.
“The barrel-busting bombs that are falling from the skies likewise”. “I am asking and urging them to go that extra mile to save the 9 September agreement at the eleventh hour”, stressing the need to end terrorism in Syria and the region and to ground the Syrian air force.
The International Committee for the Red Cross says it has delivered food, medical supplies, and other supplies to a set of four besieged Syrian towns that have been inaccessible to aid organizations in almost six months.
The organization said Sunday it had reached 60,000 residents trapped in the towns of Madaya, Zabadani, Foua, and Kafraya.
Once Syria’s economic powerhouse, Aleppo has been ravaged by war and roughly divided since mid-2012 between government control in the west and rebel control in the east.
But both have accused the other of failing to adequately rein in forces under their influence on the ground – rebels, in the case of the United States, and the Syrian government, in Russia’s case.
Syrian activists say several civilians have been killed in renewed airstrikes on opposition areas in the contested city of Aleppo.
According to Save the Children, half of the casualties being pulled from the rubble or treated in hospitals are children.
Mohammad Zein Khandaqani, a member of the Medical Council, which oversees medical affairs in the opposition areas, says he expects numerous most badly wounded will die from insufficient treatment and facilities.
One hospital told the charity that 43% of the injured they treated on Saturday were children, and a Syrian ambulance crew said more than 50% they picked up in the past 48 hours were children.
However the United Nations special envoy on Syria Staffan de Mistura told the same meeting he was convinced the situation in Syria could still be turned and said he would not quit, as Russian Federation and the United States try to salvage a ceasefire.
“The systematic and indiscriminate use of such weapons in areas where civilians are present may amount to a war crime”, he said.
When the Syrian ambassador to the United Nations, Bashar al-Jaafari, began speaking, Power left the chamber, along with her counterparts from Britain and France, according to diplomats. The U.N. now claims that nearly 2 million people have been left without water.
Recalling that China’s Foreign Minister had said on Thursday that the Council had the responsibility to ensure the cessation of hostilities was re-launched, he said: “The conflict can not be resolved through negotiations without the help of the co-chairs. Otherwise, Russia and Iran will be complicit in war crimes committed in Aleppo”, Ayrault said as quoted in the ministry’s press release.
Shortly after the ceasefire ended Monday, a UN-Syrian Arab Red Crescent aid convoy was hit in an airstrike, killing about 20 people.
UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Stephen O’Brien, while not accusing Russian Federation, said that if the attack on the convoy was deliberate it would constitute a war crime. “Instead of helping get life-saving aid to civilians, Russian Federation and Assad are bombing the humanitarian convoys, hospitals, and first responders who are trying desperately to keep people alive”, she said.
Britain’s United Nations ambassador, Matthew Rycroft, joined the U.S.in its condemnation of Russia: “The regime and Russia have … plunged to new depths and unleashed a new hell on Aleppo”.
“In short, it is hard to deny that Russian Federation is partnering with the Syrian regime to carry out war crimes”, he added. “That is a war crime”.
The UN Security Council meeting is being held in NY at the request of the U-S and France.
Talking to the BBC’s Andrew Marr, Johnson said Putin’s regime not only “handed Assad the revolver” but in some instances is “actually firing the revolver”.
“A war crime is defined as when you attack a civilian target in the knowledge that it is a civilian target”.
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Also, Saturday, the foreign ministers of France, Italy, Germany, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the High Representative of the European Union issued a joint statement that put the onus on Russian Federation to revive the cease-fire.
