US blames Russia for Syrian aid convoy attack

USA officials said new intelligence indicates that Russian forces, rather than the Syrians, conducted the strike.

Also on Tuesday, Secretary of State John Kerry and his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, met in NY to talk about saving the deal for a cease-fire.

Moreover, Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has also denied claims made by U.S. officials that two Russian Sukhoi SU-24 warplanes were seen above the convoy before the attack.

The strike came just hours after the Syrian army announced the end of the truce Monday, accusing rebels of failing to “commit to a single element” of the US-Russia deal. Since the shaky truce started on September 12, the opposition reported 254 violations by Assad’s forces and their allies, a senior Syrian opposition official declared the cease-fire “clinically dead”.

It was not clear who was behind the attack late on Monday. The U.S. State Department said it was “outraged” by the bombing and would be raising the matter directly with Russian Federation.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which said it was postponing an aid convoy that had been set to deliver supplies to four besieged Syrian towns, warned of the consequences for millions of civilians in need.

The deal was created to allow aid to reach civilians, but an attack on a convoy carrying humanitarian supplies after the ceasefire ended has sparked outrage.

The UN has suspended all aid convoys in Syria after a devastating attack on its lorries near Aleppo on Monday. Much of the aid was destroyed.

Whether it was the Russians or the Syrian regime is still unknown but the burden of responsibility lies on Russia to ensure regime compliance. “And yet these aid workers were killed in their attempt to provide relief to the Syrian people”. The White Helmets first responder group posted images of a number of vehicles on fire and a video of the attack showed huge balls of fire in a pitch black area, as ambulances arrive on the scene.

The convoy was part of a routine interagency dispatch operated by the Syrian Red Crescent.

Human Rights Watch reviewed more than 10 photos of the aftermath of the attack that showed injured and dead civilians, huge fires engulfing buildings, damaged trucks filled with what seemed to be food and other supplies, and people showing logos of the Red Crescent and United Nations agencies on damaged supplies.

It was carrying food, medicines, emergency health kits, IV fluids, and other essentials supplied by the United Nations and the World Health Organisation.

“The head of SARC sub-branch in Orem Al-Kubra, Mr. Omar Barakat, and a number of truck drivers and offloading workers were killed during the attack”, the statement reads.

Hijab, once a prime minister under Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, said in an interview that the failings in the ceasefire deal brokered by the United States and Russian Federation were flawed from the outset. “For the foreseeable future. we will be in deconfliction mode and not in the joint operations [mode]” with the Russians.

Al-Halaby said that rebels in Aleppo province also claimed Russian aircraft were behind the attack.

It destroyed 18 trucks in a 31-vehicle convoy – the war planes struck as aid including food and winter clothes was being unloaded. Photo courtesy of the Aleppo Media Center.

The rebels didn’t disassociate themselves from al Qaeda, the Syrian government failed to provide access to humanitarian agencies and the USA was also involved in an inadvertent attack against Syrian Army soldiers, according to Abrahms.