BEIRUT -- A United Nations humanitarian aid convoy inside Syria was hit by airstrikes Monday, U.N. officials said, as the Syrian military declared that the weeklong cease-fire brokered by the U.S. and Russia had failed.
Turkey, meanwhile, announced plans Monday to create a safe zone in Syria the size of the Grand Canyon.
With the truce apparently teetering, the U.S. brushed off Damascus' assertions and said it's prepared to extend the agreement, while Russia -- after blaming rebels for the violations -- suggested it could still be salvaged.
U.N. officials said the U.N. and Red Crescent convoy was delivering assistance for 78,000 people in the town of Uram al-Kubra, west of Aleppo city. Initial estimates indicated that at least 18 of the 31 trucks in the convoy were hit, as well as the Red Crescent warehouse in the area.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition monitoring group, said at least 12 people were killed in the attack, mostly truck drivers and Red Crescent workers. The Syrian Civil Defense, the volunteer first-responder group also known as the White Helmets, confirmed that figure.
Jan Egeland, humanitarian aid coordinator in the office of the U.N. envoy for Syria, said in a text message that the convoy was "bombarded."
Egeland added, "It is outrageous that it was hit while offloading at warehouses."
U.N. humanitarian chief Stephen O'Brien called on "all parties to the conflict, once again, to take all necessary measures to protect humanitarian actors, civilians, and civilian infrastructure as required by international humanitarian law."
The convoy, part of a routine interagency dispatch operated by the nonprofit Syrian Red Crescent, was hit in rural western Aleppo province. The White Helmets posted images of a number of vehicles on fire in the dead of the night. A video of the attack showed huge balls of fire in a pitch-black area as ambulances arrived on the scene.
A Red Crescent official in Syria confirmed the attack but said no further information was available.
Elsewhere, at least 20 civilians, including a 1-year-old girl, were killed in airstrikes on rebel-held parts of Aleppo city and the surrounding areas, according to the Observatory. Russia said government positions in southwestern Aleppo came under attack from militant groups, including a barrage of rockets.
Salvaging the deal
Both Moscow and Washington indicated a desire to try to salvage the agreement, which had brought a brief respite to at least some parts of the war-torn country.
In the wake of the Syrian military declaration, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry acknowledged that the first stage of the truce -- which called for a week of calm and the delivery of humanitarian aid to several besieged communities -- had never really come to fruition. Earlier in the day, Kerry told reporters on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly that the truce was "holding but fragile."
The State Department said it was ready to work with Russia to strengthen the terms of the agreement and expand deliveries of humanitarian aid. Spokesman John Kirby said Russia, which is responsible for ensuring Syria's compliance, should clarify the Syrian position.
The latest developments placed added importance on a meeting today of the International Syria Support Group, comprised of countries with a stake in the conflict and which endorsed the truce, to be led by Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
A Russian Foreign Ministry statement late Monday night appeared to signal that the deal could still be salvaged, saying that the failure by the rebels in Syria to respect the cease-fire threatens to thwart the agreement.
The cease-fire went into effect Sept. 12. Under terms of the agreement, the successful completion of seven days of calm and humanitarian aid deliveries would be followed by a second-stage plan to set up a joint U.S.-Russian coordination center to plan military strikes against the Islamic State militant group and Jabhat Fatah al-Sham, the militant group formerly known as the Nusra Front. The group renounced its ties to al-Qaida in July, but the U.S. rejects that claim.
The group's perceived al-Qaida affiliation makes it eligible for target by the planned joint military strikes.
From the start, the truce has been beset by difficulties and mutual accusations of violations.
Aid deliveries to the besieged eastern districts of Aleppo have not reached their destinations. The U.N. accused the government of obstructing the delivery, while Russian officials said rebels opened fire at the delivery roads.
Rebel forces and activists say government planes have bombed areas that are under the truce agreement, including rebel-held parts of Aleppo. At least 22 civilians were killed in government bombings over the past week, according to the Observatory. The group said four civilians were killed in government-held areas. There were no independent reports from the government side of deaths of civilians since the cease-fire went into effect.
Sides trade blame
By Monday, both the Syrian government and prominent opposition activists were speaking of the truce as if it had already failed.
George Sabra, of the opposition Higher Negotiating Committee, said Monday that the truce has been repeatedly violated and did not succeed in opening roads for aid.
"Hundreds of thousands of people in Aleppo are waiting for this truce to allow aid to enter the city," he said, adding that there were aid trucks still waiting on the Turkey-Syria border. "I believe that the truce is clinically dead."
A Syrian military statement placed the blame on the rebel groups. Damascus refers to all armed opposition groups as terrorists.
"This [cease-fire] was to constitute a real chance to stop the bloodshed. But the armed terrorist groups didn't take it seriously and didn't commit to any of its articles," the military statement said. "The armed terrorist groups took advantage of the declared truce system and mobilized terrorists and weapons and regrouped to continue its attacks on civilian and military areas."
One of the major rebel groups in Syria, Nour el-Din el-Zinki, said soon after the Syrian military declaration that the government, Russia and Iran, another major ally of President Bashar Assad, are responsible for the truce's failure.
"The regime of Bashar Assad had no real intention to commit to the truce. Instead it worked to undermine it with organized violations during the week as well as preventing aid from reaching Aleppo," the group said in a statement sent to reporters.
Earlier Monday, Lt. Gen. Sergei Rudskoi of the Russian military's General Staff said in a briefing that Assad's side had fulfilled its obligations.
"With the rebels failing to fulfill conditions the cease-fire agreement, we consider its unilateral observance by the Syrian government forces meaningless," Rudskoi said.
Rudskoi said the rebels had violated the truce 302 times since it took effect a week before, killing 63 civilians and 153 Syrian soldiers. The opposition on Monday reported 254 violations by government forces and their allies since the truce started.
The tensions come on the heels of the weekend airstrike by the U.S.-led coalition on Syrian army positions near Deir el-Zour. Syria and Russia blasted the U.S. over the attack.
The Saturday airstrikes involved Australian, British and Danish warplanes on Syrian army positions. The U.S. military said it would not intentionally hit Syrian troops and that the attack came as it was conducting a raid on Islamic State positions.
Russia's military has said it was told by the Syrian army that at least 62 Syrian soldiers were killed in the Deir el-Zour air raid and more than 100 were wounded.
The Observatory gave a different death toll, saying 90 troops were killed in the strikes.
Assad said Monday that the airstrikes of the U.S.-led coalition against his troops were meant to support the Islamic State, calling the attack a "blatant American aggression."
Turkish offensive
Elsewhere Monday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said his military, which entered Syria last month to push Islamic State and Kurdish separatists from the border area, will expand its offensive to clear a 1,931-square-mile sanctuary.
The operation is liable to escalate Turkey's conflict with both the Islamic State and the Kurdish separatists and is set to be Turkey's largest incursion since it poured troops into northern Iraq in the 1990s to attack strongholds of that country's autonomy-seeking militants.
Turkey's goal "is likely to require the deployment of thousands of Turkish soldiers in Syria for years and increase risks of a possible military confrontation with Syrian forces," Nihat Ali Ozcan, a strategist at the Economic Policy Research Foundation in Ankara, said by telephone Monday.
Turkey has been trying to assert greater influence in Syria after confrontations with both the U.S. and Russia there.
After Moscow intervened militarily last year on behalf of the Syrian government, Erdogan was forced to soften his hard-line stance against Assad's involvement in postwar politics. He's also had to swallow U.S. support for Syrian Kurdish rebels, whose separatist aims he deplores.
Another declared aim of the Turkish operation in Syria is to push Syrian Kurds affiliated with Kurdish separatists in Turkey away from border areas.
Turkey has declared areas west of the Euphrates River off-limits to Kurdish forces in Syria, and on Monday, Erdogan announced that Turkey will not let Syrian Kurds link areas they control along his country's border with Syria.
Erdogan criticized Syrian Kurdish fighters for not retreating from Manbij after taking it from the Islamic State, signaling that Turkey might force them to withdraw.
The Kurds' objective is to unite areas under its control in northwestern Syria with other Kurdish areas in Turkey and Iraq "to reach to the Mediterranean," Erdogan said.
Information for this article was contributed by Sarah El Deeb, Vladimir Isachenkov, Bassem Mroue, Philip Issa, Albert Aji, Jamey Keaten, Edith Lederer, Maria Danilova and Matthew Lee of The Associated Press and by Selcan Hacaoglu of Bloomberg News.
A Section on 09/20/2016