Russian Federation says Syria bombing continues amid U.S. threats

The United States is on the verge of ending its Syria diplomacy with Russian Federation and is looking at new options on how it might seek to end the 5-1/2 civil war, USA officials said on Thursday.

US Secretary of State John Kerry recently warned that a continued Russian offensive in Aleppo would threaten the bilateral cooperation which would hamper scheduled joint military operations targeting the Islamic State terror state.

But Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told a conference call with reporters on Thursday that the Russian air force would continue to support Syrian government troops and that what he called the “war on terror” would continue.

He also urged Washington to deliver on a pledge to separate moderate Syrian opposition fighters from “terrorists”.

Russia’s rift with the US over Syria is growing after Moscow accused Washington of “de facto support for terrorists”.

On Wednesday, US State Secretary John Kerry told his counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, that the US holds Russian Federation responsible for the violence in Aleppo and is threatening to break off all cooperation with Moscow in Syria.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry threatened to end all Syria negotiations with Russian Federation today, in response to Russia’s weeklong aerial assault on the besieged city of Aleppo.

According to the State Department spokesman John Kirby, during a phone call with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Kerry expressed “grave concern” about Russian and Syrian regime attacks on hospitals, water supply networks and other civilian facilities in Aleppo.

Kirby was later asked what incentive Russian and Syrian officials had to stop fighting and he gave an answer which suggests an escalation of the war. On Tuesday, Raed al-Saleh, the leader of the White Helmets, an unarmed civilian rescue organization in Syria, revealed sobering statistics.

They condemned the airstrikes in eastern Aleppo, an area “populated with hundreds of thousands of civilians, half of whom are children”.

The latest bombardment has been some of the worst in Syria s five-year civil war, and comes after the failure of a short-lived ceasefire brokered by Russian Federation and the United States earlier this month.

The destruction in Aleppo is so great that the US should be able to assemble greater global military and logistical support and training for the embattled rebels, said one USA official.

Obama told a town hall event at a USA military base that the situation was “heartbreaking” and he had re-examined his Syria policy on a near-weekly basis.

An estimated 250,000 people still live in eastern Aleppo, which has been under near-continuous siege since mid-July, causing food and fuel shortages.

A Syrian military source said yesterday that the air force had conducted strikes in a string of villages north of Hama that rebels have seized in recent weeks, adding that it had destroyed tanks and armoured vehicles and killed “dozens of terrorists”.

Aleppo has been divided for years between government and rebel zones. “But our American colleagues are totally fixated on demands of a seven-day pause for reasons that only they know”.

U.S. officials say the administration is looking at other ways to end the war in Syria that has been going on for over five years.

A top United Nations aid official called the situation in Aleppo a “merciless abyss of humanitarian catastrophe”, in the latest appeal for a halt to fighting.