U.S. strongly suggests Russian jets bombed aid convoy in Syria

The U.S. publicly held Russia responsible Tuesday for Sunday's deadly airstrikes on a humanitarian aid convoy delivering food and medicine to a besieged town outside Aleppo, Syria, but unidentified U.S. officials also said they are almost certain that Russian aircraft actually carried out the bombing, which destroyed 18 trucks and killed at least 20 people, according to the United Nations. The U.S. can track aircraft in the area, and the Pentagon has determined with "very high probability" that a Russian Su-24 fighter jet was directly over the convoy less than a minute before the airstrike, a senior U.S. official tells The New York Times. "We know the plane in question was Russian, not Syrian, and was directly overhead."

"We have no indication that anything other than Russian tactical aircraft were in the air at the time the convoy was struck, to include both strike and reconnaissance aircraft," a second American official tells the Times. "We have seen no indication that it was anything other than an airstrike." A U.S. official also told CBS News that "preliminary indications" were that a Russian jet hit the convoy.

Witnesses and survivors say that the convoy was hit with multiple strikes as workers were unloading the food and medicine, then rescue workers were killed when they came to assist the injured. A Red Cross official says a hospital was also destroyed in the attack. The United Nations has condemned the attack, with Secretary General Ban Ki-moon calling it "sickening, savage, and apparently deliberate," and a top U.N. aid official saying it was likely a war crime. Peter Maurer, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, called the attack a "flagrant violation" of international law.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Russian officials have responded with an evolving series of denials and accusations. The U.S. "has no facts," Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said at the U.N. on Tuesday. "We have nothing to do with this situation."