Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov says Thursday, according to Russian news agencies, that Moscow sees no alternative to the U.S. -Russia-brokered cease-fire in Syria.
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This was a reference to Saturday’s bombardment and killing of dozens of Syrian troops by the US-led coalition fighting the Islamic State group, an attack which Washington said was a mistake. “The ceasefire is over, the humanitarian access is not guaranteed and the fighting has resumed”.
He cited separate air strikes on Monday that killed four aid workers near Aleppo.
The France-based Union of Medical Care and Relief Organizations said the five were part of an emergency medical unit in Khan Touman near Aleppo.
One activist group said 10 people had been killed in Bustan al-Qasr. The group later said two nurses and two ambulance drivers were killed, while a third nurse remains in critical condition.
The group’s vice president, Dr. Oubaida Al Moufti, told The Associated Press that “the mobile medical team was hit while responding to an earlier airstrike targeting militants from the al-Qaida-linked Fatah al-Sham Front”.
He called for all planes in key areas of Syria to be immediately grounded and for countries to stop supporting those who sabotage ceasefire efforts.
Moscow backs Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government, while Washington supports numerous rebel factions fighting to topple him.
The airstrike on a Syrian Arab Red Crescent convoy Monday night prompted worldwide condemnation over attacks targeting humanitarian facilities and workers.
Half of Syria’s population has been uprooted, many of them fleeing to Europe, and well over 300,000 men, women and children have been killed, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon told the meeting. The convoy was carrying United Nations aid.
U.S. officials have told AFP that two Russian SU-24 warplanes were operating in the area where the aid convoy was struck, and one of them was directly above the convoy when it was hit.
“There only could have been two entities responsible, either the Syrian regime or the Russian government”, President Barack Obama’s national security spokesman Ben Rhodes said.
But Moscow has denied all involvement, instead suggesting a fire broke out destroying the vehicles among other theories.
Defense Ministry spokesman Maj.
In New York on Tuesday, Russian and US diplomats insisted that the Syrian cease-fire, which went into effect nine days ago, was not dead, despite indications of soaring violence.
The United States believes two Russian aircraft attacked an aid convoy near Aleppo in a strike that shattered a one-week truce, US officials said on Tuesday, but Russia denied involvement.
The Syrian military said the truce expired Monday night, shortly before presumed Russian or Syrian government jets launched a sustained aerial attack on Aleppo’s opposition-held neighbourhoods. Syrians living in opposition areas will be disproportionately affected because the UN’s major warehouses are located in government-held areas.
SYRIAN troops advanced in Aleppo and fought off rebel assaults in Damascus yesterday as Russian Federation and the United States blamed each other for the collapse of an attempted ceasefire.
Ibrahim Alhaj, a member of the volunteer first responders known as the Syria Civil Defense, said 24 people were killed in the Aleppo strikes.
The town is besieged by government forces. The pilot was rescued, according to an unnamed military official quoted on state TV.
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The militant group downed a government aircraft Sunday in the eastern Deir el-Zour province.
