UN ready to resume sending aid convoys to Syria
The United Nations says it is ready to resume sending humanitarian convoys to Syria after the dispatch was suspended following an attack on trucks and a warehouse near the northwestern city of Aleppo.
The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in a statement on Wednesday that it would soon resume aid delivery for desperate Syrians in militant-held towns and hard-to-reach areas.
"The preparation for these convoys has now resumed and we are ready to deliver aid to besieged and hard-to-reach areas as soon as possible," the statement said.
The OCHA once again called for "safe, unconditional, unimpeded and sustained access to all Syrians in need, wherever they are."
The UN earlier said at least 18 trucks in a 31-vehicle convoy had been destroyed during the late hours of September 19 as they came under an “airstrike” en route to deliver humanitarian aid to the hard-to-reach town of Urum al-Kubra.
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said in a statement that the airstrike killed about 20 people. The victims included volunteers as well as a Syrian Arab Red Crescent (SARC) staffer.
On Tuesday morning, the UN announced it was suspending all deliveries and called for an investigation.
Washington quickly held Moscow responsible for the attack.
Russia, which has been engaged in an aerial campaign in Syria upon a request by Damascus, said soon after the incident that neither its military nor that of Syria had conducted any airstrike against the convoy.
In his Tuesday statement, Igor Konashenkov, the spokesman for the Russian Defense Ministry, said, “Russian and Syrian warplanes did not carry out any airstrikes on a UN humanitarian aid convoy in the southwest of Aleppo.”
He also stated that there were no signs indicating that the UN convoy that was apparently attacked near the city of Aleppo had been hit by an airstrike.
Speaking at a meeting of the UN Security Council on Wednesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called for a thorough and impartial investigation into the attack on the aid convoy.
The Russian top diplomat blamed opposition forces for the collapse of the ceasefire in Syria, saying they had frequently violated the truce. He also stated that it was time to review the list of terrorist groups that had to be excluded from ceasefire agreements.
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