UN suspends aid to Syria after convoy attacked
The United Nations is suspending its aid operations in Syria after a deadly attack on a convoy and warehouse carrying life-saving supplies in rural Aleppo on Monday night, a UN spokesperson said, leaving tens of thousands of people without desperately needed food and medicine.
“At the moment aid operation remains suspended while we assess and reevaluate the situation on the ground,” the spokesperson said, adding aid convoys planned had come to a halt.
The convoy of 31 trucks was carrying life-saving aid to around 78,000 people when it was attacked near the embattled city of Aleppo, the United Nations and aid organizations said.
Officials from the UN and US said they were “disgusted” and “outraged” by the incident, which according to the UN saw 18 of the trucks in the convoy hit.
Twelve people involved in the aid delivery were killed, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based organization that monitors the conflict in Syria.
No one has claimed responsibility for the attacks and it is unclear whether the convoy was hit by an airstrike or shelled.
The Syrian Civil Defense, a volunteer emergency medical service, posted video of the aftermath of the attack on social media showing a warehouse ablaze and claiming that helicopters had dropped four barrel bombs on the site of a Syrian Arab Red Crescent (SARC) aid warehouse, blaming the Syrian regime for the attacks.
CNN cannot confirm the authenticity of the video nor who was responsible for the attack.
The UN and International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), however, confirmed that the SARC warehouse had been struck. The convoy and the warehouse were both in the area of Urum al-Kubra, a reportedly rebel-held town west of Aleppo city.
The director of a SARC branch was among those killed in the attack, ICRC Middle East public relations officer Krista Armstrong told CNN.
Omar Barakat – the SARC’s director in Urum al-Kubra – was killed at the warehouse, she said. His pictures from Facebook are being widely circulated.
The SOHR said at least 32 people in total were killed in separate attacks in Aleppo and its western suburbs on Monday. The violence came just hours after Syrian authorities declared that a fragile ceasefire in the war-torn country was over.
Swift condemnation
Getting aid to areas cut off by fighting has been a growing concern for humanitarian agencies – with trucks destined for eastern Aleppo, where an estimated 250,000 civilians have been short of food, medicine and water, prevented from getting through.
“Our outrage at this attack is enormous,” said Staffan de Mistura, the UN’s special representative for Syria. “The convoy was the outcome of long process of permission and preparations to assist isolated civilians.”
Stephen O’Brien, the head of the UN’s relief organization, said he was “disgusted” by the reports and said if it’s discovered that aid workers were deliberately targeted, that the strike would amount to a war crime.
The State Department also said it was outraged by the reports: “The destination of this convoy was known to the Syrian regime and the Russian federation and yet these aid workers were killed in their attempt to provide relief to the Syrian people.”
Before news of the attack broke, neither the US nor Russia – the countries which brokered the pact – publicly said that the ceasefire is over.
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