US is willing to extend Syria truce despite violations

“Our outrage at this attack is enormous”, said Staffan de Mistura, the UN’s special representative for Syria.

Strikes in the Aleppo area reportedly killed 32 people on Monday, including 12 in the attack on the aid convoy.

The antigovernment groups, in turn, have blamed the Syrian government for continued bombings and for blocking the humanitarian aid deliveries that were a central component of the cease-fire. “Given the egregious violation of the Cessation of Hostilities, we will reassess the future prospects for cooperation with Russia”, Kirby said.

Kerry said on Monday that there had finally been some progress with aid.

A SARC warehouse was also hit, United Nations spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.

United Nations aid chief Stephen O’Brien said initial reports indicated many people had been killed or seriously wounded, including SARC volunteers, and that if the “callous attack” was found to be deliberate, it amount to a war crime.

In this grab taken from video provided by the Syrian Civil Defence White Helmets, a member of the team describes the damage after an airstrike, in Aleppo.

Moscow supports Syrian President Bashar al-Assad with its air force.

The current tensions come on the heels of the weekend air strike by the US-led coalition on Syrian army positions near Deir el-Zour.

“With the rebels failing to fulfill conditions the cease-fire agreement, we consider its unilateral observance by the Syrian government forces meaningless”, Rudskoi said.

A local resident told Reuters by phone that the trucks were hit by about five missile strikes while parked in a centre belonging to the Syrian Red Crescent in Urm al-Kubra, a town near Aleppo.

“We received devastating news about one of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent structures in rural Aleppo coming under attack”, Stephen Ryan, a spokesperson for the International Federation of Red Crosses, told BuzzFeed News via email.

Rather than discuss that fallout, however, one has to wonder if Russia knew that by somehow making the USA violate the ceasefire agreement days after making it and during an election year where the transition of power to the next US president would determine the future of Russia’s role in the Middle East might have been something both the Assad regime and the Russians could have coordinated.

It also comes just days after the U.S. said it was likely that it and several other aircraft in its coalition had mistakenly hit Syrian soldiers in an airstrike. So we need to see what the Russians say; but the point, the important thing is the Russians need to control Assad, who evidently is indiscriminately bombing, including of humanitarian convoys.

The United Nations said it had received government approval to reach almost all the besieged and hard-to-reach areas where it sought to bring aid, but access to many areas was still constrained by fighting, insecurity and administrative delays. “Instead it worked to undermine it with organized violations during the week as well as preventing aid from reaching Aleppo”, the group said in a statement sent to reporters. “The last two were barrel bombs”, he said, the sound of an explosion audible in the background.

“I am deeply concerned at the breaking reports that the UN/SARC inter-agency convoy to Big Orem was hit this evening”, Stephan O’Brien, the head of the UN’s humanitarian aid coordination agency, said in a statement. “The regime and Russians are taking revenge on all the areas”, he said.

The air raid by the USA -led coalition killed dozens of Syrian soldiers and led to a harsh verbal attack on Washington by Damascus and Moscow.

The Russian official, Lieutenant General Sergei F. Rudskoi, accused US-backed Syrian rebel groups of joining forces with an extremists who have been denounced as terrorists by both Moscow and Washington.

The first administration official said the U.S. is trying to gather as much information as possible to find out what happened, adding that Kerry will consult with key partners, as well as his Russian counterparts, Monday night and Tuesday morning.

“There was no ceasefire to begin with for us to say whether it failed or succeeded”, Riad Hijab, general coordinator of the High Negotiations Committee, told reporters.

However, he also repeated calls for the sustained delivery of humanitarian aid to Aleppo and other besieged communities. Assad initially refused to sign off on United Nations aid convoys trying to provide food and other supplies to civilians outside of Damascus, Homs, and Aleppo.

But most aid shipments envisaged under the truce have yet to go in.

“Clearly one of the factors that might be at play here is whether the forces were easily identifiable as Syrian government forces”.

It came under massive strain on Saturday when a US-led coalition strike hit a Syrian army post near the eastern city of Deir Ezzor, where government forces are battling the Islamic State jihadist group.

Children walk near damaged buildings in rebel-held Ain Tarma, eastern Damascus suburb of Ghouta, Syria, Sept. 17, 2016.