Russian Federation on Thursday dismissed a proposal by the U.S.to ground all aircraft in northern Syria to prevent further attacks on aid convoys in the war-torn country.
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Rebel-held areas of the northern Syrian city of Aleppo saw the heaviest air strikes in months overnight, activists say, as a week-old truce collapsed.
RIA cited Ryabkov as explaining why Moscow had rejected Kerry’s idea.
Lavrov spoke before Kerry, saying that ensuring the safety of aid workers is the responsibility of all actors in Syria, not just the Assad regime and Russian Federation.
The latest broadside from Russia’s foreign ministry followed an acrimonious confrontation between Mr. Kerry and his Russian counterpart, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, at the United Nations over the fate of the cease-fire.
The truce came into effect on 12 September in order to create a safe corridor for aid into war-hit Aleppo, where numerous inhabitants are said to be in dire need.
The resumption was also announced by the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the global body’s aid agency, which said in a statement Wednesday: “The preparation for these convoys has now resumed and we are ready to deliver aid to besieged and hard-to-reach areas as soon as possible”.
An alliance of jihadists and Islamist rebels has been battling to break the government’s siege after sustaining a major reverse earlier this month.
On Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry criticized what he called Russian Federation and Syria’s attack on civilians and aid workers and told the UN Security Council that flights in the region should be banned from allowing aid flow into the country.
The Sept. 9 truce envisioned a U.S.
The UN and several other humanitarian groups said they were suspending aid convoys.
The opposition says such agreements are part of a government strategy to forcibly displace populations from opposition-held areas after years of siege and bombardment.
The failure to establish a no-fly zone in the country’s north to protect Syrians from the bombing has been a mistake, according to Graham, and he also criticized the reliance on the Kurdish fighters the US has been supporting in the fight against the Islamic State.
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“Today we hope to enter Mouadamiya, a very important town where people have been suffering for very long and where they feel squeezed by all armed actors”. They told the committee the USA should not discontinue flying aircraft over Syria.
