Churkin: Foreign Military Aid Comes to Gunmen in Aleppo on Regular Basis

UNITED NATION- Militants in Aleppo use the “regime of calm” for regrouping and mobilizing fresh forces, when foreign military aid comes to them on a regular basis, Russia’s Permanent Representative at the United Nations Vitaly Churkin said on Monday at a session of the UN Security Council devoted to the crisis in the Syrian city, according to Itar Tass.

“Terrorists are using the ‘regime of calm’ to receive reinforcements from abroad, to regroup and mobilize new forces, including underage recruits,” Churkin said. “Military aid is being delivered to entrenched militants on a regular basis.”

 Churkin said that reinforcements arrived along Castello road, which the UN believes to be the only route for relief aid deliveries by land.

“We have evidence that this road is being intensively used not for humanitarian supplies to the population but for transporting weapons and ammunition to terrorists and for so-called ‘jihad-vehicles’ with suicide-bomber,” he said.

At the UN Security Council session, UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Steven O’Brien claimed that a full encirclement of eastern Aleppo by government forces should be prevented and suggested that weekly 48-hour-long pauses should be introduced for what she called relief supplies to 250,000 people. The proposal was backed by the UK and France.

Russia’s ambassador to the UN called “to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe” in Aleppo. Also, he drew attention to the fact that residents of eastern districts “can go calmly at daylight” to the western part “where the situation is comparatively safe.”

At the same time, Churkin insisted that “military operations of Syria’s government aimed at blocking and destroying the terrorists and pursue the goal of restoring law and order.”

The diplomat mentioned an incident with the murder of a 12-year-old Palestinian boy by terrorists of the U.S.-backed Nuruddin al-Zanki group. He is certain that those who feature the terrorists as moderate opposition and name them among participants in the cessation of hostilities are protecting them from “fair punishment.”

“The Security Council should have long expanded a list of terrorist organizations fighting in Syria,” he said.

Itar Tass

H.M