MOSCOW. Sept 22 (Interfax) - The remarks made by the United States top general, Joseph Dunford, that the U.S. military have no evidence of Russian involvement in the strike against a humanitarian convoy in Aleppo was a "shot in the back" to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, the Russian Foreign Ministry said.
Speaking before the UN Security Council yesterday, Kerry tried to convince everyone in the room that the attack on the humanitarian convoy came courtesy of Russia, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova recalled on her Facebook page on Thursday.
"And less than 24 hours later the Pentagon is shooting him in the back," she wrote, commenting on Dunford's statement.
"This is how stupidly and mercilessly they framed the State Department and showed the height of the flight of U.S. forces," Zakharova added, sarcastically.
Earlier, the U.S. four-star general Dunford told the U.S. Congress Armed Services Committee that Pentagon has no evidence of Russia's involvement in the shelling of the humanitarian convoy. What is known, however, is that there were two Russian aircraft in the area at the time and that in his view, it was the Russians who did it, Dunford said.
Since there were also Syrian aircraft in the area at the time, it is not possible to say definitively that Russia is to blame, but it was either Russia or Syria, Dunford said.
The 31-truck joint convoy of the UN humanitarian agencies and the Syrian Arab Red Crescent (SARC) was attacked near Urum al-Kubra, northwest of Aleppo, in the early hours of Tuesday. The attack killed about 20 civilians and a SARC employee and destroyed 18 of the trucks carrying aid.