Syria’s armed forces “exercised the highest degree of self-restraint while facing violations by terrorist groups”, the statement said.
Advertisement
Mr Laerke said yesterday that the United Nations aid coordinator had received needed authorisations from the Syrian government in recent days to allow for aid convoys to proceed within Syria.
The United States declared Monday that Russian Federation had failed to meet its side of a deal to enforce a seven-day truce in Syria, but that Washington was willing to keep working on it.
Syrian or Russian warplanes bombed aid trucks near Aleppo late on Monday after a fragile week-long ceasefire ended, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported.
Following Monday’s attack on the aid convoy, the U.S. Department of State released a statement saying it would now reconsider the prospects of cooperating with Russian Federation.
Syria’s nascent ceasefire hung in the balance Monday after an airstrike on a United Nations aid convoy led the USA to question Russia’s commitment to calming violence in the war-torn country and its ability to influence its ally in Damascus.
A Red Crescent warehouse was also hit and a Red Crescent health clinic was reported to be seriously damaged, he said. Russia’s Foreign Ministry said the failure of Syrian rebels to adhere to the truce “threatens the cease-fire and U.S”.
The convoy from the United Nations and the Syrian Arab Red Crescent (SARC) was en route to the hard-to-reach town of Orum al-Kubra, in Aleppo province, to deliver humanitarian assistance to 78,000 people, the UN said. Initial estimates indicated that at least 18 of the 31 lorries in the convoy were hit.
A video of the attack showed huge balls of fire in a pitch-black area as ambulances arrived on the scene.
United Nations aid chief Stephen O’Brien said he was “deeply concerned” by the incident and called on “all parties to the conflict, once again, to take all necessary measures to protect humanitarian actors, civilians, and civilian infrastructure as required by global humanitarian law”.
The Russian Ambassador to the UN Vitaly Churkin accused the United States of violating its commitment of not exposing any of the Syrian force operation bases; he believed the incident as a collapse of the US-Russian truce in Syria.
US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov are due on Wednesday to attend a special Security Council meeting on Syria, held on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly meeting in NY.
Asked about the army’s statement, Mr Kerry told reporters in NY that the seven days of calm and aid deliveries envisaged in the truce had not yet taken place.
The Syrian military announced Monday it is no longer observing a cease-fire brokered by the USA and Russian Federation to allow food and medicine into besieged areas.
“Syria’s army announces the end of the freeze on fighting that began at 07:00 pm (1600 UTC) on September 12, 2016 in accordance with the U.S. -Russia agreement”, the general command of the armed forces said in a statement carried by Syria’s state-run SANA news agency.
The Syrian military said its seven-day “regime of calm” had expired and did not say if it would be renewed.
“The convoys that we had hoped to move across the border to Syria as well as aid inside Syria have been temporarily put on hold”.
Some Syrian rebel groups also expressed pessimism about the ceasefire. The destination of this convoy was known to the Syrian regime and the Russian federation and yet these aid workers were killed in their attempt to provide relief to the Syrian people. There were no independent reports of deaths of civilians on the government-side since the cease-fire came into effect.
O’Brien said eastern Aleppo had not received aid since early July.
The Syrian military statement placed the blame squarely on the rebel groups.
Despite the spike in tension, food aid did reach the Damascus suburb of Moadamiyat al-Sham after a government deal granting amnesty to opposition fighters in the besieged town.
Advertisement
“This step (cease-fire) was to constitute a real chance to stop the bloodshed”.
