If confirmed, the claim of direct Russian involvement in the bombing that killed at least 20 people in Syria would have far-reaching consequences
https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/70f503852730d0fc45a2802e67651bb6e6510608/0_308_5068_3040/master/5068.jpg?w=620&q=55&auto=format&usm=12&fit=max&s=7d4dfa33260042be482b560ea00baf7f
The scene the morning after a convoy delivering aid was hit by a deadly airstrike in Syria. Photograph: Omar Haj Kadour/AFP/Getty Images
Julian Borger and Spencer Ackerman in New York
US defence officials now believe that Russian planes dropped the bombs that destroyed a UN aid convoy that killed at least 20 people, the Guardian has learned.
The claim of direct Russian involvement in the bombing, if confirmed, would have far-reaching consequences. Earlier on Tuesday, Ban Ki-moon used his farewell address to the UN general assembly to denounce it as a “sickening, savage and apparently deliberate attack”, describing the bombers at “cowards”, and UN officials have said it is a potential war crime.
The outgoing secretary general told world leaders in New York that the UN had been forced to suspend aid convoys in Syria because of Monday’s attack on Syrian Red Crescent trucks that were carrying UN food supplies to a rural area west of Aleppo city.
Victims of the attack included the local director of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent, Omar Barakat. Ban hailed the dead aid workers as heroes and said “those who bombed them were cowards” before calling for accountability for crimes committed in the war. “Just when you think it cannot get any worse, the bar of depravity sinks lower,” he said.
Aid officials said the convoy was hit from the air while food and medicine were being unloaded at a warehouse in opposition-controlled Urem al-Kubra.
Reuters news agency quoted two US officials as saying two Russian Sukhoi SU-24 warplanes were in the sky above the aid convoy at the precise time it was struck.
The White House and state department said they could not confirm the allegations, while the Russian foreign ministry rejected them with “resentment and indignation”.
Previously, US officials had said that they would hold Moscow responsible for the attack, even if it was carried out by Syrian aircraft, as Russia had taken responsibility for the regime’s compliance with the ceasefire as part of the 9 September agreement.
But Moscow has not conceded that the convoy was hit by an airstrike, claiming instead that the 18 lorries had “caught fire”. In a separate statement on Tuesday, the country’s defence ministry said that the aid convoy had been accompanied by a militants’ pickup truck armed with a heavy mortar , Russian news agencies reported.
The US officials said there was no doubt the convoy was destroyed in an airstrike and that western coalition forces had no role in it.
“There are only three parties that fly in Syria: the coalition, the Russians and the Syrian regime. It was not the coalition. We don’t fly over Aleppo. We have no reason to. We strike only I sis, and I sis is not there. We would leave it to the Russians and the Syrian regime to explain their actions,” said Capt Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman.
In a meeting with John Kerry, Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, admitted that the Russian military had been monitoring the convoy – apparent drone surveillance footage of its progress had been live-streamed on a defence ministry website . But he claimed the Russians had “lost track of it when it entered rebel territory ”, according to diplomatic sources. Moscow had launched an investigation, Lavrov told the other foreign ministers.
Later on Tuesday, however, the Russian foreign ministry put out an angry denunciation of allegations against Moscow and Damascus.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/20/un-aid-convoy-attack-syria-us-russia
Who is fooling who?