US claims Russian planes attacked aid convoy heading to Aleppo

US defence officials now believe that Russian planes dropped the bombs that destroyed a UN aid convoy that killed at least 20 people, the Guardian reported.

Earlier yesterday, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon used his farewell address to the UN General Assembly to denounce the “sickening, savage and apparently deliberate attack”, describing the bombers at “cowards”. UN officials have said it is a potential war crime.

He told world leaders in New York that the UN has been forced to suspend aid convoys in Syria because of Monday’s attack on Syrian Red Crescent trucks that were carrying UN food supplies to a rural area west of Aleppo city.

Russia’s defence ministry denied Russian and Syrian involvement in strikes on the aid convoy. Spokesperson Igor Konashenkov told Russian state run channel Rossiya 24 that “all information on the whereabouts of the convoy was available only to the militants controlling these areas.”

US officials however have claimed that there was no doubt the convoy was destroyed in an airstrike and that western coalition forces had no role in it.

“There are only three parties that fly in Syria: the coalition, the Russians and the Syrian regime. It was not the coalition. We don’t fly over Aleppo. We have no reason to. We strike only ISIS, and Isis is not there. We would leave it to the Russians and the Syrian regime to explain their actions,” Pentagon spokesman Captain Jeff Davis said, using another acronym for Daesh.