His comments came as USA secretary of state John Kerry and Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov were preparing to meet in an attempt to revive the shattered ceasefire.
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“While the world is struggling in NY to achieve a truce, Assad is continuing to bomb Aleppo into ruins”, Steinmeier said, referring to several days of failed talks on restoring the ceasefire, attended by the top diplomats of the U.S. and Russian Federation.
Kerry declared “we can not continue on the same path any longer” but said he had given Russia another chance to come up with “immediate and significant steps” to stop violence, including the end of Russian and Syrian government bombing of opposition areas.
The US has been railing at Russian Federation since the ceasefire collapsed, but were complaining almost as loudly even while the ceasefire was in effect and holding, and appeared angriest when Russian Federation criticized the US airstrikes in Deir Ezzor.
“We have four centres in eastern Aleppo”.
Mr Assad also said deadly U.S. air strikes on Syrian troops last week were intentional, dismissing American officials’ statements that they were an accident.
Washington was supposed to pressure rebel forces to respect the truce and distance themselves from jihadists, but the ceasefire fell apart acrimoniously and the Syrian army declared it over on Monday. “You don’t commit a mistake for more than one hour”, he said. Assad made the remarks in an interview with the Associated Press.
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.
When asked what the Obama administration’s next steps in Syria would be, one official answered candidly, “This is something we’re giving a lot of thought to ourselves”.
General Joe Dunford, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said two Russian aircraft were in the area over Orum al-Kubra, a town in Aleppo province, where Monday’s air strike on the convoy occurred. And the government of Bashar Assad regularly bombed rebel-held eastern Aleppo, cutting civilians off from much-needed aid.
When the U.S. -Russia brokered truce went into effect in Syria on September 12, calm prevailed Aleppo and other Syrian cities, but the violence renewed after the truce expired this Monday.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported at least 30 air strikes had targeted different areas of Aleppo from midnight.
A senior US State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told reporters: “The ball is very much in the Russians’ court to come back to us with some ideas that are serious, that would be above and beyond the types of things they have been willing to agree to in the past with regard to air activities over large parts of Syria”.
Russian Federation and Syria both deny responsibility for the deaths of at least 20 people in the bombing of an aid convoy that was carrying desperately needed humanitarian relief to thousands of Syrians.
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The war has killed as many as a half-million people, contributed to Europe’s worst refugee crisis since World War II and allowed the Islamic State group to emerge as a global terror threat.
