“So Russia’s client, Russia’s supported friend, is the single biggest blockade to the ability to move forward here”, Kerry said, adding that Russia should “stop the grandstanding, stop the showboating and get the humanitarian assistance going”.
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Russian Federation has accused the United States of “defending” IS after the strike and said has put a fragile ceasefire in Syria at risk.
Syria’s fragile cease-fire started to unravel on Sunday with the first aerial attacks on rebel-held neighborhoods of Aleppo and a southern village that killed at least eight people, violations that came as tensions between the American and Russian brokers of the deal worsened following a deadly us strike on Syrian government forces.
Bouthaina Shaaban, a political and media adviser to Assad, told CNN’s Becky Anderson that Syria is adhering to the truce and the U.S. should start cooperating.
Sunday was the deadliest day of the truce so far, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, with 11 civilians killed in areas where the ceasefire was supposed to have taken hold.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said that more than 60 Syrian troops were killed in four airstrikes near the city of Deir al-Zour, the Interfax news agency reported.
“The terrorists have taken advantage of the ceasefire to amass themselves and continue to attack residential areas and military positions, mainly in the provinces of Hama, Qunaitera, and Aleppo”, the military statement said.
The US -Russian agreement marks the second ceasefire negotiated by Washington and Moscow this year in the hope of advancing a political solution towards ending the war, now in its sixth year, that has killed hundreds of thousands of people.
He referred to a 20-truck convoy, the first of two that would have carried flour and other food supplies, enough to feed some 185,000 people for one month, he said.
An Agence-France Presse correspondent in Aleppo’s Karam al-Jabal district saw several wounded children after a raid.
The U.S. military said it might have unintentionally struck Syrian troops while carrying out a raid against ISIS in eastern Syria on Saturday.
“Today was the highest death toll since the truce began”, said Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said that USA coalition air strikes which hit Syrian army positions near Deir al-Zor on Saturday were a “flagrant aggression”.
In a phone interview from Damascus on Sunday, senior Assad adviser Buthaina Shaaban said that the government “believes that the strike was intentional”.
“None of the facts on the ground show that what happened was a mistake or a coincidence”, she said.
State media confirmed a plane had been shot down and its pilot killed, but did not say who was responsible.
In recent months, the Obama administration has significantly toned down its “Assad must go” rhetoric, prompting many to suggest that the United States has understood that it will have to deal with the Syrian president in the foreseeable future.
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Indeed, Kirby named Daesh as Washington’s key priority in Syria, but his comment does not clearly state that removing Assad was out of the question.
