France: Russia or Syria to blame for airstrike on school

Russia or the Syrian government are responsible for an airstrike on Syria’s Idlib province that led to deaths of 26 civilians, most of them school children, France’s Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said earlier today.

“Who is responsible? In any case it is not the opposition because you need planes to launch bombs. It’s either the Syrians – the regime of [President Bashar] Al-Assad – or the Russians,” Ayrault told a news conference.

“It’s yet another demonstration of the horror of this war, which is a war against the Syrian people, which we cannot accept.”

Earlier today, Russia’s foreign ministry denied that it was responsible for the attack.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said airstrikes killed at least 26 people in a village in Syria’s opposition-held Idlib province yesterday.

Anthony Lake, the head of the UN children’s agency UNICEF, said of the attack: “If deliberate, it is a war crime.”

“This latest atrocity may be the deadliest attack on a school since the war began more than five years ago.”