Hijab said there would ultimately not be a military victory and that the opposition would continue political efforts to end the “suffering of the Syrian people”.
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The United States, Russia and more than a dozen other countries have declared that Syria’s ceasefire is not dead despite increasing violence on the ground.
No one has claimed responsibility for the attacks and it is unclear whether the convoy was hit by an airstrike or shelled.
Russian President Vladimir Putin shakes hands with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry at the G20 summit in China, on September 5, 2016.
Jan Egeland, head of the United Nations humanitarian task force for Syria, said the convoy was bombed despite aid agencies coordinating their movements with all sides on the ground.
“The latest example of this is the flagrant American aggression on one of the Syrian army’s positions in Deir Ezzor”, said Assad.
“Failing to respect and protect humanitarian workers and structures might have serious repercussions on ongoing humanitarian operations in the country, hence depriving millions of people from aid essential to their survival”.
The Syrian Red Crescent said the head of one of its local offices and “around 20 civilians” were killed in Monday’s strike, which a war monitoring group blamed on Russian or Syrian aircraft.
Among the victims was Omar Barakat who headed the Red Crescent in the town where the attack occurred, they said. The Syrian Civil Defense, the volunteer first responder group also known as the White Helmets, confirmed that casualty figure.
A Syrian state TV correspondent in Homs reported that ambulances and Syrian Red Crescent vehicles were on standby to transfer 300-500 people, including wounded armed men, their families and residents in a critical medical condition.
Thomas said he had few new details about the airstrike Monday that hit a convoy of trucks carrying humanitarian aid.
Too many forces, from Bashar Assad’s government to al-Qaida’s Syrian offshoot, don’t really want the cease-fire to last.
Russia says Syrian government troops, supported by Russian air forces, have repelled an offensive by “terrorists” on the northern fringes of Syria’s largest city of Aleppo.
A United Nations spokesman in NY confirmed that at least one of its aid convoys, sent in coordination with the Syrian Arab Red Crescent, was hit on the way to the Syrian city of Orum while carrying enough food and aid for 78,000 people. He said that some of the trucks were already emptied when the attack occurred and that in all, 20 trucks were destroyed or damaged.
The ceasefire, which came into force on September 12, saw an initial drop in fighting but violence began to escalate late last week and the deal came under severe strain over the weekend.
Photos posted by Aleppo 24 News showed what appears to be an SUV riddled with shrapnel, its windshield blown out. The official described a series of meetings that included descriptions of inventory for the convoy, the route and timing of the trucks as well as approval for the members of the convoy itself, coordinated through the ICRC, UN and other groups with the Syrian government.
However, Saturday’s coalition strikes near Deir Ezzor Airport – in a part of eastern Syria not covered by the ceasefire – sparked a furious row between the U.S. and Russian ambassadors to the United Nations outside an emergency Security Council meeting called on the matter.
Egeland added, “It is outrageous that it was hit while offloading at warehouses”.
Many leaders came a day early to attend Monday’s first-ever United Nations summit on refugees and migrants, which approved a declaration aimed at providing a more coordinated and humane response to the world’s 65.3 million displaced people.
The strike on Syrian soldiers has strained relations between the deal´s primary sponsors, Washington and Moscow, who had said they would increase cooperation against Jihadist groups if the truce held for a week.
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The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that aid workers had been killed in an “aerial bombardment”.
