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Excerpts from AP interview with Syrian president Assad

Republican Senator John McCain, the committee’s chairman, fiercely criticized the possibility of future cooperation and called U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who brokered the ill-fated deal, “delusional” for seeking it.

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He said Monday’s attack, which killed 20 civilians, had raised profound doubt over whether Russian Federation and the Syrian government would live up to the terms of the ceasefire deal.

The United Nations is ready to restart vital aid convoys to Syria days after airstrikes targeted a humanitarian convoy near the northern city of Aleppo, killing 20 people, according to a U.N. envoy.

Washington blames Russian Federation for carrying out a deadly air strike on a United Nations aid convoy in northern Syria after Bashar Al Assad’s military declared the ceasefire over.

“There could only have been two entities responsible, either the Syrian regime or the Russian government, ” President Barack Obama’s national security spokesman Ben Rhodes said.

He insisted that all sides must rein in rebel groups on the ground to ensure they comply with the ceasefire and said a list of terror groups not covered by the truce should be reviewed.

The United States and Russian Federation have been leading diplomatic efforts to negotiate a lasting ceasefire and have been discussing how to coordinate attacks on militants from Daesh and the group formally known as the Nusra Front.

This post was syndicated from The Guardian NigeriaThe Guardian Nigeria.

Aid operations were halted so security could be reviewed in the wake of Monday’s deadly attack on the Red Cross convoy.

Assad said, “As we see now the American officials, they say something in the morning and they do the opposite in the evening”.

Aid operations were halted so security could be reviewed in the wake of Monday’s deadly attack on a Red Cross convoy, which the United States believes was carried out by Russian jets. He said the strikes hit a “huge” area for more than an hour, with no militants “adjacent to the Syrian troops there”.

The dictator made the claims while talking with Associated Press and said the attacks ‘lasted for almost one hour’.

More than 50 people were reportedly killed in Aleppo.

“Today we are sending an interagency, cross-line convoy with urgently needed aid to people in a besieged area of rural Damascus”, said UN Humanitarian Agency spokesman Jens Laerke. Then, a Russian ambassador said forces were targeting another area.

“This is not a joke”, Kerry exclaimed, urging all to stop the “word games that duck responsibility or avoid the choices … with respect to war and peace, life and death”.

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Pro-government forces have surrounded the rebel-held eastern half of the city since July, in an attempt to take full control of the strongest opposition bastion in the country’s north.

Rescue workers move an injured man from the rubble after airstrike in the Al Ansari district of Aleppo