Raid on Syria convoy triggers Russia-US spat

Intense air raids shook Syria’s Aleppo on Wednesday as increasing tensions between Moscow and Washington poisoned efforts to revive a failed ceasefire.

The US believes that Russia was responsible for an air strike on an aid convoy that killed about 20 people in Syria, a US official told AFP on Tuesday. Two Russian SU-24 warplanes were operating in the area where the aid convoy was struck in the Aleppo region late Monday, the official said. “The best evaluation we have is that the Russians carried out the strike,” the official added on condition of anonymity.

Moscow reacted furiously to the “unsubstantiated” accusations from the US that Syrian or Russian planes were responsible for the bombing.

Russia on Wednesday said a Predator drone from the US-led coalition was in the air over the aid convoy was destroyed. “The evening of September 19 in the sky over that area at a height of 3600 metres and moving at a speed of 200 kilometres per hour there was an attack drone from the international coalition,” Russian military spokesman Igor Konashenkov said.

The Russian foreign ministry said that it was watching “with indignation and anger” at attempts by “protectors of terrorists and bandits” to blame Russia or Syria for the attack. “The unsubstantiated, hasty accusations seemed designed to distract attention from the strange error of coalition pilots,” said the statement.

The Pentagon and Russia had planned on some low levels of coordination to hit Islamic State targets in Syria if a fragile truce lasted for seven days, but with the ceasefire in tatters officials said plans were on indefinite hold.

Russia’s defence minister said on Wednesday that Moscow will dispatch its flagship aircraft carrier to bolster its forces in the eastern Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Syria. “Currently, the Russian naval deployment to the east Mediterranean consists of no less than six battleships and three or four support vessels,” minister Sergei Shoigu said, Russian news agencies reported.

“In order to bolster the military capabilities of the group, we plan to add the Admiral Kuznetsov aircraft carrier to the group.

Despite the tensions, US secretary of state John Kerry insisted that efforts to salvage the truce were “not dead” after a short meeting of the 23-nation International Syria Support Group (ISSG) in New York, where world leaders have gathered for the UN General Assembly.