One of the officials said the attack “had dealt a serious blow to our efforts” and “it is up to the Russians to demonstrate seriousness of goal”.
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While Arab, European and other officials waited, Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov met in a NY hotel hoping to quickly iron out some of the many differences between Washington and Moscow.
“Well, the Syrians didn’t make the deal”, Kerry told reporters in NY.
That would have required the U.S. to share information with Moscow, a prospect that made some Pentagon officials uncomfortable.
“What have we seen these last few hours?” he asked.
“But, from the UK’s point of view we are there to deal with Daesh, to deal with the terrorist threat that is Daesh”.
The global medical charity Doctors Without Borders says it is “shocked’ by the attack on an aid convoy in Syria, calling it the latest example of the “continuous disregard paid to the basic rules of war” in the six-year conflict”.
State Department spokesman John Kirby said the USA is ready to work with Russian Federation to strengthen the terms of the ceasefire agreement and expand deliveries of humanitarian aid.
The Syrian army said in a statement last week that the cease-fire would last until midnight Sunday but it’s not clear if the U.S. -Russia-brokered deal set a time limit for the truce. The Syrian military, just hours earlier, had declared the week-long truce had failed.
Also Sunday, Aleppo’s governor, Hussein Diab, called on insurgents in the eastern neighborhoods to turn themselves in, hand over their weapons and take advantage of an amnesty decree issued recently by Syrian President Bashar Assad.
Russia’s Defense Ministry is denying that Russian warplanes or those of the Syrian government conducted the deadly airstrikes that targeted an aid convoy in northern Syria the previous night.
A convoy delivering aid to Syrians in Aleppo province was hit by a deadly air strike hours after the Syrian military declared an end to a week-long ceasefire, with an outraged United Nations warning it could amount to a war crime.
US Secretary of State John Kerry said the ceasefire was “holding but fragile”.
The ceasefire officially started last Monday after months of negotiations between the United States and Russian Federation.
He added that the situation looks as if it were intentionally created by the United States to accuse Russian Federation and the Syrian government of disrupting the delivery of humanitarian assistance, “although Russian Federation has repeatedly called on all countries to join forces in conducting humanitarian operations in Syria and particularly Aleppo”.
France’s foreign minister criticized both the United States and Russian Federation for the cease-fire pact that excluded the global community, saying it must have wide support if it’s going to be implemented. The strike was called off when the Russians called their USA counterparts and informed them of the mistake.
Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir pledged his country’s support for Syria’s opposition forces, along with representatives of Qatar, Turkey and European nations, and stressed that Assad can not remain in power, even though that issue has been delayed until the fighting wanes.
“The cease-fire is not dead”, Kerry insisted, adding that unspecified “specific steps” would be weighed in a follow-up discussion later this week.
The activist-operated Aleppo Media Center says suspected government warplanes dropped bombs on a number of rebel-held neighborhoods.
The general command of the armed forces blamed rebel groups for folding the ceasefire in a statement carried by Syria’s state-run SANA news agency, saying they had “a real chance to stop the bloodshed”.
According to the Red Cross the first report that the trucks and warehouse had been hit came at 8:15 pm local time (1715 GMT). United Nations officials said it was delivering assistance for 78,000 people in the town of Uram al-Kubra, west of the city of Aleppo. The figure does not include dozens of Syrian soldiers and Islamic State militants killed in the eastern province of Deir el-Zour, the Observatory said Monday.
The air strike on a Syrian army position by the US-led coalition on Saturday triggered a fierce war of words between Washington and Moscow, with Russian Federation saying it put the agreement under threat.
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The U.N. suspended aid deliveries and a Syrian human rights group reported that the government launched an offensive north of Aleppo in a bid to tighten the siege on rebel-held parts of Syria’s largest city. They also said they received intelligence that the so-called moderate Syrian rebel units have been merging with terrorist groups in the area to prepare joint attacks.
