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UN suspends aid after convoy attack; Kerry says truce not dead
GENEVA/ BEIRUT: The United Nations suspended all aid shipments into Syria on Tuesday after a deadly attack on a convoy carrying humanitarian supplies, while Washington,
GENEVA/ BEIRUT: The United Nations suspended all aid shipments into Syria on Tuesday after a deadly attack on a convoy carrying humanitarian supplies, while Washington, expressing outrage at the attack, said a week-old ceasefire was not yet dead.
The attack, described by the United Nations, Red Cross, Western countries and rescue workers on the ground as an air strike, drew condemnation from much of the world.
Russia and the Syrian government denied that their air forces were responsible for destroying a convoy unloading aid. Moscow presented an entirely different explanation, saying it believed the convoy had not been struck from the air at all but had been destroyed by fire, and suggesting that rescue workers who filmed the aftermath were somehow to blame.
The Syrian Red Crescent said the head of one of its local offices and “around 20 civilians” were killed. Other death tolls differed.
The incident appeared likely to deliver a mortal blow to the ceasefire, the latest attempt to halt a war now in its sixth year, which has killed hundreds of thousands of people and made a mockery of all previous peace efforts.
Still, US Secretary of State John Kerry, who personally negotiated the truce during months of intensive diplomacy with Russia despite scepticism from other senior figures in the US administration, told reporters: “The ceasefire is not dead.”
He spoke after emerging alongside Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov from a meeting of foreign ministers of 20 countries, gathered to discuss Syria in New York.
The United Nations peace envoy, Staffan de Mistura, said the ceasefire was in effect until its co-sponsors Moscow and Washington declared it over, and neither had done so at Tuesday’s meeting.
The state department said the ministers agreed at the meeting of the Syria Support Group to continue pursuing the ceasefire under the US-Russian plan.
Syria’s army had declared the initial ceasefire period over on Monday, hours before the attack on the convoy.
