United Nations spokesperson Jens Laerke says the suspension of aid convoys is only a temporary measure. The agency said the plane crashed in an area controlled by either the government or rebel factions.
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On Saturday, an errant US airstrike that was supposed to target Islamic State militants in Syria instead killed 60 people that Syria’s government and its Russian allies identified as Syrian soldiers; both Syria and Russia suggested that the assault was deliberate, despite USA apologies.
The feeling among officials is that if they say too much, it will expose sensitive military intelligence capabilities to the Russians.
The cease-fire was intended in part to allow humanitarian convoys to reach besieged and hard-to-reach areas throughout Syria.
Local paramedic and media activist Mohammad Rasoul, said the prolonged attack lasted for two hours, and “erased the convoy from the face of the earth”.
Several truckloads of supplies, including vast food reserves, had been held up at the Turkish border for days after the cease-fire was implemented September 12.
The strike on the trucks, which were carrying critically needed supplies of food and medicine bound for rebel-held areas of Syria’s western Aleppo province, happened Monday evening after the Syrian military declared that it regarded a seven-day partial cease-fire as over.
Geneva: The UN said yesterday it had suspended all humanitarian aid convoys in Syria after a deadly air raid hit 18 of the 31 trucks delivering aid near Aleppo, killing 12 Red Crescent staff members.
United Nations officials say the convoy was delivering food and supplies to 78,000 people in the town of Uram al-Kubra.
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 came just after a weeklong ceasefire agreement, brokered by Russian Federation and the US, came to an abrupt end.
The convoy of trucks was stalled on the Turkish border for a week as necessary transport permits, from all sides in the war, were obtained.
The International Red Cross called it a “flagrant violation of international humanitarian law”, and Save The Children described it as “devastating”.
“It was certainly not the coalition who struck from the air”.
Video uploaded by the Syrian Civil Defense forces, also known as the White Helmets, showed the site of the convoy bombing along with firefighting efforts in Aleppo’s Sukkari district.
The aid was “intended for people in dire need”.
Experts anxious that the collapse of the cease-fire and the attack on the aid convoy might derail the peace process being negotiated by Washington, D.C., and Moscow.
Moscow has firmly denied involvement in the attacks.
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Mr Ban called the attack on the aid convoy “sickening, savage and apparently deliberate” and called for those responsible to be held to account. Speaking to world leaders at the UN General Assembly in NY, he said: “The humanitarians delivering life-saving aid were heroes”.
