PHOTO: Aleppo’s M10 hospital, bombed on Monday for the third time within a week
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UPDATE 1700 GMT: US Secretary of State John Kerry has said that the US is “not abandoning the pursuit of peace” following the limitation of co-operation with Russia.
In a speech in Brussels, Kerry did not say how Washington will now pursue a political resolution. Instead, he focused on the cause of the US-Russian rift:
We acknowledge in sorrow and, I have to tell you, a great sense of outrage that Russia has turned a blind eye to Assad’s deplorable use of these weapons of war, chlorine gas and barrel bombs, against his people.
Together, the Syrian regime and Russia seemed to have rejected diplomacy…[for] the broken bodies, bombed-out hospitals and traumatized children of a long-suffering land.
He said of the Russian-regime attacks on Aleppo, “People who are serious about making peace behave differently.”
A Russian-regime airstrike today on Darat Izza in Aleppo Province:
ORIGINAL ENTRY: The US has limited its political and military co-operation with Russia because of the intense Russian-regime bombing of Syria’s largest city Aleppo.
The State Department announced the suspension of the planned Joint Implementation Center for intelligence-sharing with Russia, primarily over airstrikes on the Islamic State and the jihadists of Jabhat Fatah al-Sham, formerly Jabhat al-Nusra.
The JIC was to follow a seven-day US-Russian ceasefire. However, after the Syrian military ended the “freeze on hostilities” on September 19, Russia and the regime bombed a UN aid convoy and renewed their aerial assault on Aleppo, killing more than 500 civilians.
On Monday, the Russian-regime attacks hit the M10 hospital, one of the last significant medical facilities in opposition areas of Aleppo, for the third time in a week. Seven people were killed, including three construction workers trying to repair damage from earlier strikes and put the hospital back in service.
The pro-opposition Local Coordination Committees documented another 29 deaths in Aleppo yesterday, most of them in attacks on the neighborhoods of Halk and Beidin.
State Department spokesman John Kirby said:
The United States is suspending its participation in bilateral channels with Russia that were established to sustain the cessation of hostilities….Unfortunately, Russia failed to live up to its own commitments and was also either unwilling or unable to ensure Syrian regime adherence to the arrangements to which Moscow agreed.
This is not a decision that was taken lightly.
Secretary of State John Kerry had threatened the suspension of links with Moscow on Wednesday, although he kept contacting Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov by phone.
The US said that contacts with Russia over “de-confliction” — avoiding accidental encounters between Russian and US warplanes in Syrian airspace — will continue.
Russia: US “Ready to Make Deal with Devil”
Hours before the announcement, the Kremlin said Russia is halting participation in an agreement with the US to dispose of weapons-grade plutonium because of American “unfriendly actions”. It demanded that Washington reduce its military presence in NATO countries near Russia and cancel all sanctions against Moscow.
The Russian Foreign Ministry responded to the State Department by trying to blame the US, despite the Russian-regime attacks which have included strikes on a UN aid convoy, hospitals, and power lines supplying water pumping stations.
“Washington simply did not fulfil the key condition of the agreement to improve the humanitarian condition around Aleppo,” spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said. “After failing to fulfil the agreements that they themselves worked out, they are trying to shift responsibility on to someone else”.
Zakharova insisted that “in the past few days” Russia had “taken efforts aimed at fulfilling” the US-Russian ceasefire deal, repeating Moscow’s line that rebels must be “separated” from Jabhat Fatah al-Sham/Jabhat al-Nusra:
It all essentially came down to a simple question – who are Jabhat al-Nusra, who is behind them, and why can’t Washington fulfil its promise to divide the terrorists from the so-called moderate opposition.
We are becoming more convinced that in a pursuit of a much desired regime change in Damascus, Washington is ready to “make a deal with the devil”. For the sake of ousting Syrian President Bashar Assad, the US appears to be ready to forge an alliance with hardened terrorists, dreaming of turning back the course of history.
UN: “Lost Generations” From Russian-Regime Destruction
UN officials warned on Monday of “lost generations” from the Russian-regime bombing.
Benyam Dawit Mezmur, Chair of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, said:
Even if the war were to end today, it will take decades to recover from the destruction wrought on Aleppo and across Syria and the psychological wounds to heal from the trauma inflicted on these children.
We are probably not talking of a lost generation, but quite possibly of lost generations,” he added in a news release.
Mr. Mezmur recalled that Syria and Russia had both ratified the Child Rights Convention:
It means not targeting children in situations of armed conflict; it means not attacking places such as schools and hospitals, which might amount to war crimes under international humanitarian law….
[Yet] this is what we are seeing.
20 Killed, 55 Wounded in Bombing of Wedding Hall in Hasakah
Twenty people were killed and 55 wounded on Monday by the bombing of a wedding hall in Hasakah in eastern Syria.
A suicide bomber detonated his vest at the hall near the village of Safyiah on the Hasakah-Qamishli highway.
No group claimed responsibility. However, the Islamic State has carried out previous bombings in the area near the Iraqi border.
In August, Kurdish forces pushed the Assad regime’s militia out of Hasakah.
