Moscow, SANA – Russian Defense Ministry denied Western mass media reports on a supposed airstrike allegedly carried out by Russia’s aviation on al-Qaterji neighborhood in Aleppo on August 17.
“We have repeatedly stressed that the aircraft of the Russian Aerospace Forces in the Syrian Arab Republic never strikes targets in populated localities. This concerns Aleppo’s Qaterji mentioned by the Western mass media that is adjacent to two corridors recently opened to provide safe passage for local citizens as part of Russia’s humanitarian operation,” the Ministry’s spokesman Igor Konashenkov told reporters.
The spokesman said that officers from Russia’s coordination center for monitoring the cessation of hostilities agreement who are now in Aleppo register daily incidents where streets and houses near the humanitarian corridors are shelled by terrorists from self-made multiple rocket launchers and artillery weapons, adding that the terrorists have kept the city’s eastern neighborhoods under siege to cut off the supply of medical or other assistance to local citizens there.
“Of course, the predicament that all children are going through in Aleppo’s terrorist-controlled eastern neighborhoods is a tragedy. However, the cynical use of this calamity by some Western mass media in their stereotyped anti-Russian hype is a moral crime,” the spokesman asserted.
Reem/H. Said