At least five emergency medical workers were said to have been killed in airstrikes near the northern city of Aleppo on Tuesday, following the collapse of a fragile cease-fire in Syria.
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It was not immediately clear who carried out the airstrikes, though U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Wednesday that “there are only two countries that have airplanes that are flying during the night or flying at all in that particular area – Russian Federation and Syria”.
The cessation agreement brokered by the United States and Russian Federation appeared to have collapsed on Monday when the Syrian military declared it over, citing repeated violations by rebel groups.
The ceasefire was part of a US-Russia deal to halt fighting across Syria and bring in humanitarian aid to desperate civilians, especially in divided Aleppo.
The United Nations, Red Cross and United States had all described Monday’s incident as an air strike, implicitly pinning the blame on Russian or Syrian aircraft that fly in the area for breaking the ceasefire with an attack on a humanitarian target.
Spokesman Jens Laerke of OCHA says the temporary suspension of the aid deliveries would hold pending a review of the security situation in Syria.
He said it’s “a very, very dark day. for humanitarians across the world”. Their deal earlier this month would have created a new, joint U.S.
Reached for clarification, OCHA’s Damascus office said only interagency convoys had been suspended, without elaborating further. Initial reports by the organization claimed the convoy had been targeted by an airstrike.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights put the toll at 13 dead including nine rebel fighters, some of them belonging to the al Qaida-linked Fatah al-Sham Front.
The bombing killed around 20 civilians as well as the director of the Red Crescent’s Urum al-Kubra branch, Omar Barakat. A United Nations humanitarian aid convoy in Syria was hit by airstrikes Monday as the Syrian military declared that a U.S. Also unknown is who carried out the attack. Russia’s Defense Ministry said no Russian or Syrian aircraft carried out strikes.
The Russian military “carefully studied the video recordings of the so-called activists from the scene and found no signs that any munitions hit the convoy”, Konashenkov said.
Monday’s raid on the convoy destroyed at least 18 of 31 vehicles, as well as a Red Crescent warehouse in Orum al-Kubra in Aleppo province.
They say instead that it was Syrian rebels who destroyed the convoy, from the ground, not the air. He said regional allies supported continued diplomacy and that the “preferable course” remained to see if the agreement could be implemented.
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On Saturday, Russia said that US jets had killed more than 60 Syrian soldiers.
