Excerpts from AP interview with Syrian president Assad

While acknowledging some mistakes, he denied any excesses by his troops and claimed the rebel-held parts of Aleppo, Syria’s second-largest city, weren’t really under siege.

Syrian President Bashar Assad told the AP in an interview in Damascus that the United States was to blame for the deal’s failure. The Syrian capital, seat of Assad’s power, has stayed relatively untouched throughout the conflict, spared the devastation inflicted on other, opposition-held areas of the country.

The UN resumed aid deliveries on Thursday after a pause in the wake of a strike on the convoy in Syria’s north that killed 20 civilians and destroyed 18 aid trucks. They said they heard aircraft and that among the blasts were barrel bombs, which are dropped from government helicopters.

The US has accused Russia of being behind the destruction, with officials saying that two Russian Sukhoi-24 jets – also flown by Syrian government forces – were detected in the air above the area at the precise time of the attack.

Russian Federation is responsible for the bombing of a United Nations humanitarian convoy earlier this week in Syria, the top US military officer said Thursday. Ibrahim Alhaj, a spokesman for Aleppo’s Civil Defence search-and-rescue, said: “for anyone who hears the airstrikes from yesterday, at 7 p.m., until now, they would say it is a world war in Aleppo”, he said according to the Telegraph.

Syria’s military command for Aleppo says it is commencing operations in the contested city’s rebel-held eastern quarters.

More than 50 people were reportedly killed in Aleppo.

Sen. Ben CardinBen CardinTop Dem: “Risk factor” to extending Iran sanctions in lame duck Senate rejects push to block Saudi arms sale Pentagon: No US aircraft flying during Syrian convoy attack MORE (D-Md.), ranking member of the Foreign Relations Committee, said if found to be deliberate, the attack would amount to a war crime. Assad said USA airstrikes on Syrian tro.

ASSAD: He said that in the years of conflict, no global organization or aid convoy has come under attack.

Amid U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s call for no-fly zones in Syria, Russia prepares to send aircraft carrier the Admiral Kuznetsov in order to bolster its forces in the eastern Mediterranean off Syria.

“It wasn’t an accident by one airplane. It was definitely intentional, not unintentional as they claimed”.

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 only way to achieve that is if the ones that have the air power in that part of the conflict simply stop using it”, he said as the meeting in NY broke up.