Russian Federation rejects war crime claims of bombing Syrian hospitals

At least seven people were killed in the strike Monday morning, according to the nonprofit aid group Doctors Without Borders, which runs the hospital. Some of the targets have belonged to the Syrian military, but by and large the focus has been on the Kurdish YPG, which Turkey insists is a “terrorist” organization. “To expect this only from Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar is neither right nor realistic”.

He repeated Syrian claims that the US-led coalition had carried out the air strikes that hit the MSF-backed hospital.

In a conference call with journalists, Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for President Vladimir Putin, said those making the allegations should rely on the “primary source” – official announcements from the Syrian government.

Russian air support for the Syrian government offensive has transformed the balance of power in the five-year-old war in the past three weeks.

The Obama administration, frustrated by Syria’s ongoing violence, told Russian Federation on Tuesday to “put up or shut up” about implementing a ceasefire in the Arab country, even as the US backpedaled from an agreement for the truce to begin by Friday. The hospital was installed without prior consultation with the government, and the aid group must “assume the full consequences of their act because… they did not operate with the Syrian government permission”, he said.

Damascus says its objectives are to recapture Aleppo, Syria’s biggest city before the war, and seal off the border with Turkey that has served as the main supply route into rebel-held territory for years.

On the global front, tensions escalated over Russia’s air war backing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, with Ankara branding the bombing “barbaric”.

Kurdish forces continued their push towards territory held by Islamic State northeast of Aleppo on Monday.

SDF official Ahmad al-Omar said dignitaries from northern Syria are mediating a deal to open a corridor for militants to leave Marea for the northern town of Azaz near the border.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the attacks, which the UN said killed close to 50 civilians, were a blatant violation of global laws.

Turkey warned the YPG it would face the “harshest reaction” if it tried to capture a town near the Turkish border. “If Russia continues behaving like a terrorist organisation and forcing civilians to flee, we will deliver an extremely decisive response”, Turkish Prime Minister, Ahmet Davutoglu.

Amid the rising condemnation over Kremlin’s aerial campaign in Syria, Russia has rejected accusations that it committed war crimes by targeting hospitals in the warzone nation. “Russian Federation regrets this. We are not the initiators of this”.

Turkey views the Syrian Kurdish fighters as an extension of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, which has waged a decades-long insurgency against Ankara. In the immediate future, though, we should expect Syria’s downward spiral to accelerate if three key trends persist: Syria’s fragmentation into half a dozen hostile component parts with wildly different aims, an increased reliance on military action on all sides and the likely fragmentation of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) into thousands of hardened militants dispersed across the region and the rest of the world.

An ally of Ankara within North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and the anti-terror coalition, it also supports Kurdish militia groups fighting ISIS in Syria.