USA officials told the BBC on Tuesday that their information clearly indicated that it was an air strike, and that two Russian Su-24 ground attack aircraft were in the sky above the convoy at the precise moment it came under fire.
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The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group says it expects 350 residents to evacuate Thursday. Instead, the two-hour discussion served as a warm-up act for a Thursday meeting blocks away in NY that will include Kerry, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and their counterparts from more than a dozen European and Arab countries.
The ancient city, which has become both a symbol of resistance and the high price that civilians are paying in the war, has been carved into rebel- and government-controlled areas since 2012. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has expressed outrage at the attack that killed twenty people on Monday, and tried to bring the focus back to ending the protracted Syrian war.
Speaking about Aleppo, where rebel-held areas have been intermittently under siege for months, he said, “If there’s really a siege around the city of Aleppo, people would be dead by now”.
The International Syria Support Group was to consider a USA call for all warplanes to halt flights over aid routes following an attack on a humanitarian convoy near the besieged city of Aleppo, as well as a Russian suggestion for a three-day pause in fighting to get the “cessation of hostilities” back on track.
At one point during the AP interview, Assad denied restricting access for aid convoys to besieged cities. US officials said the attack – its first direct hit on Syrian forces since the civil war began – was accidental and that the warplanes thought they were targeting Islamic State group positions. During the brief cease-fire, trucks carrying aid sat idle by the nearby Turkish border, awaiting permits and safety guarantees. Millions have fled Syria, some of them drowning at sea in the Mediterranean.
ASSAD: He denied attacking hospitals, saying, “How can I attack hospitals while I am sending vaccines, for example?” They told the committee the US should not discontinue flying aircraft over Syria.
“We have to call the facts as we see them and describe the situation as the people of Syria are experiencing it”, the official said.
He said planes from the Syrian regime were also in the area, so he couldn’t definitely say who dropped the bombs.
A furious Kerry then told the entire room, Lavrov included, that “even while we are meeting here, they are doing this”, said the official, who wasn’t authorized to speak publicly on the matter and demanded anonymity. The State Department called Assad’s claim the strike was intentional “ridiculous”. The nation’s top military officials are expected to face sharp questions from Republicans angry the Obama administration is not taking more aggressive steps to end the 5-year-old-civil war in Syria.
Nevertheless, the United Nations’ deputy envoy for Syria said Thursday he hoped talks could resume in the coming weeks, despite “grim” events on the ground.
Kerry says the US will continue pushing for a negotiated truce and political transition that can end five years of war.
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The group shared this year’s Right Livelihood Award, sometimes known as the “Alternative Nobel”, with activists from Egypt and Russian Federation and a Turkish newspaper, the prize foundation announced Thursday. “Those convoys were in the area of the militants, the area under the control of the terrorists”, he said. “You have to use armaments”.
