Russia denies its warplanes hit MSF hospital in Syria

According to AFP, the Kremlin denied the bombing of hospitals in northern Syria on Tuesday as “unsubstantiated accusations”.

“We categorically do not accept such statements, the more so as every time those making these statements are unable to prove their unfounded accusations in any way”, President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

France and Turkey have said that the strikes on two locations by forces supporting Syrian president Bashar al-Assad amounted to war crimes.

He also echoed a statement by the Turkish Foreign Ministry, which earlier described the bombings of schools and hospitals in Idlib and Aleppo as an “obvious war crime”. “Naturally, we are keeping a close eye on the steps taken by the Turkish and Saudi leadership”, Alexey Pushkov, the chairman of the worldwide committee at Russia’s State Duma lower parliament house. Seven people, including five patients, were confirmed killed in the attack.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has also spoken of her support for the creation of a no-fly zone in northern Syria, telling German newspaper the Stuttgarter Zeitung that it could create a haven for fleeing families, and offer at least a partial solution to Europe’s refugee crisis.

U.S.-allied Kurdish forces, which until now have mainly battled the Islamic State group and remained largely neutral in the civil war, have been advancing in the same region, battling Syrian rebels and other insurgents in a bid to expand a nearby enclave.

An escalation is possible if Turkey launches the ground operation, said independent military analyst Alexander Golts: “Russia will face the alternative to evacuate immediately and lose face or launch a ground operation”. Moscow’s airstrikes in Syria have helped pro-regime forces on the ground make significant gains over opposition-held areas over the last few months, including nearly entirely encircling Syria’s largest city, Aleppo.

Abu Ali Sijjos, an Arab rebel commander overseeing security at the Bab al-Samah border crossing, told Voice of America the loss of Tell Rifaat means rebel fighters lack a defensive line that would enable them to protect displaced civilians gathered at the border to escape Russian airstrikes.

And in the neighboring Aleppo province, a missile struck a children’s hospital in the town of Azaz, killing five people, including three children and a pregnant woman, according to the Observatory.

Critics have expressed doubts about the prospects of the proposed truce as the Syrian army, backed by Russian air power, pursues a major offensive in northern Syria. “We are discussing this with allies”, the official said.

US support for the Syrian Kurds, Turkey’s ambassador to Washington Serdar Kilic said in an interview, “is a big strategic mistake…it will be regretted, but it will be too late”.

“We want a ground operation with our global allies”, a senior Turkish official told reporters in Istanbul.

For Assad and his Russian and Iranian-backed allies, any opposition group is a terrorist organization.

Erdoğan’s government sees a link between the Kurdish militias in Syria and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party in Turkey, a far-left paramilitary group that fights for Kurdish independence.

“The Assad regime and its supporters would continue these attacks, without cause and without sufficient regard for global obligations to safeguard innocent lives”, U.S. State Department spokesman John Kirby said in a press release.

Seeking to keep alive the deal for a “cessation of hostilities” in Syria clinched in Munich, Germany, last week, the UN’s envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, arrived in Damascus on Monday.

“The worldwide community and the global media is so concerned about the humanitarian situation in Syria, about accusing Russian Federation of doing this or that and they paid no attention to what’s going on just on the Turkish-Syrian border, what the Turks are doing and the humanitarian situation there – it’s a disaster”.