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Four medical staff killed in Syria air strike, relief group says

In nearby Idlib, the Observatory said 12 civilians, including two children, were killed in at least eight air raids.

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The U.S. can track aircraft in the area, and the Pentagon has determined with “very high probability” that a Russian Su-24 fighter jet was directly over the convoy less than a minute before the airstrike, a senior U.S. official tells The New York Times. Russian Federation has been helping its close ally President Bashar al-Assad in the fight, though it has said its efforts are focused on attacking terror groups such as ISIS that have flourished during the conflict. “We are in a position to say that the convoy was attacked”, U.N spokesperson Jens Laerke told the Guardian. There are also allegations that Syrian planes carried out the attack.

All aid convoys in Syria have been suspended after the attack on 18 trucks carrying humanitarian supplies.

Russian Federation and the USA continue to work to shore up the accord.

All aid convoys in Syria are now suspended.

Moscow denied that Russian or Syrian aircraft were behind the attack, saying there was a fire in the cargo.

The Russians have yet to respond to Kerry’s request to ground all regime aircraft, but negotiations will likely continue through the rest of the week at the U.N. General Assembly in NY.

The cease-fire was intended in part to allow humanitarian convoys to reach besieged and hard-to-reach areas throughout Syria.

APPHOTO NYKH103: U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, left, sits with United Nations envoy to Syria, Staffan de Mistura during the International Syria Support Group meeting Tuesday, Sept. 20, 2016, in NY.

The United States, Russia and more than a dozen other countries are declaring that the Syrian cease-fire isn’t dead – despite increasing violence on the ground there.

The ceasefire was agreed by Moscow and Washington on September 9.

They are to meet again on Friday.

The aid convoy was hit on Monday night in the area of Urum al-Kubra, west of Aleppo, prompting the United Nations to halt its aid operations in Syria. The U.N. called it a deliberate attack.

The U.N. later rolled back on claims that the convoy was targeted by an airstrike.

The International Union of Medical Care and Relief Organisations said the new strike in northern Syria levelled a medical triage point in rebel-held town of Khan Touman, south of Aleppo.

Four medics were killed and a nurse was critically wounded when an air strike hit a clinic in a village near Syria’s second city Aleppo, the aid group that runs it said.

When asked who was behind the airstrikes, Rami Abdurrahman of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said Syrian President Bashar Assad’s “regime does not have the capabilities to carry out such airstrikes within two hours”. The pilot was rescued, according to an unnamed military official quoted on state TV.

The defence minister, Sergey Shoigu, also said Russian Federation was dispatching its flagship aircraft carrier, the Admiral Kuznetsov, to “bolster military capabilities” in the eastern Mediterranean. The cease-fire last week was created to lead to military cooperation between the USA and Russian Federation in the fight against ISIS and a rebel group that has had ties to al-Qaida.

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World Food Programme spokeswoman Bettina Luescher said in a statement that the United Nations food agency had airdropped aid to the besieged eastern city of Deir el-Zour earlier Tuesday “as part of the planned schedule of deliveries”.

US Russia trade barbs as Security Council addresses Syria