U.N. resumes humanitarian aid to Syria
The United Nations said it resumed humanitarian aid deliveries to war-torn Syria on Thursday after halting the convoys because of an attack that killed at least 21 people.
Jens Laerke, a spokesman of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), told Reuters that an inter-agency convoy would cross conflict lines into a besieged area of rural Damascus. "We will advise on the exact locations once the convoy has actually reached those locations," he said.
The Damascus branch of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent tweeted images of its aid vehicles on the move.
The U.N. suspended aid deliveries on Tuesday after the convoy was struck near Aleppo in northern Syria the previous day. The Syrian Arab Red Crescent said one of its employees and around 20 civilians were killed. The U.S. government blamed the attack on Russia, which said neither it nor its ally Syria were involved.
A Russian military spokesman said a U.S.-led coalition Predator drone was in the area at the time. The Pentagon denied the claim.
Syrian President Bashar Assad blamed the U.S. for the collapse of a cease-fire deal brokered with Russia that went into effect on Sept. 12.
In an interview with the Associated Press conducted Wednesday and published Thursday, Assad said the U.S. “doesn’t have the will” to join Russia in fighting Islamic extremists in Syria.
He rejected accusations that Syrian or Russian warplanes struck the aid convoy Tuesday and denied that his forces prevented food from entering rebel-held parts of Aleppo. U.S. airstrikes on his troops in eastern Syria were “definitely intentional,” he added, according to the AP.
On Wednesday, Secretary of State John Kerry urged the grounding of all aircraft over parts of Syria to allow aid to reach civilians.
He told the U.N. Security Council that stopping the flights could restore trust in efforts to end the war and “give a chance for humanitarian assistance to flow unimpeded.”
Kerry dismissed Russia’s denial of blame in the convoy attack after citing several contradictory statements from different Russian officials — including that damage to the convoy occurred because the cargo caught fire.
"Anybody here seriously believe that? This is not a joke," he said.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov called for a "thorough and impartial" investigation of what happened to the convoy at the U.N. Security Council.
He said the failing cease-fire was the fault of rebel groups that the U.S. had pledged to control, and said that separating the rebels from terrorists is the only way to reach a settlement and resume a political dialog "without preconditions.”
At least 11 civilians, including four aid workers, were killed Wednesday after suspected government airstrikes hit a medical clinic and other locations in rebel-held areas of Aleppo, according to the London-based monitoring group the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.