PRESS RELEASE
Moscow Blasts Shameful Western Response To Bombing of Russian Hospital in Aleppo
Dec. 6, 2016 (EIRNS)—When Russian or Syrian warplanes allegedly bomb a hospital in east Aleppo, condemnation from around the Western world is immediate and intense, but when the Russians are the victims, the response, if there is one at all, is disgraceful. State Department spokesman Mark Toner, during a briefing on Dec. 5, wouldn’t even confirm that the shelling of the Russian military field hospital in Aleppo, just a few hours before, had even occurred; therefore, would not condemn it.
"It’s difficult to do, obviously, given the fighting and given our lack of access to what’s happening on the ground," he said. But "of course we condemn any attack on a hospital or health care facility."
According to a report on RT TV, earlier today, both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch refused to condemn the attack, allegedly for lack of information, while the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) issued a general statement saying that
"repeated attacks on healthcare and other civilian infrastructure throughout Aleppo are further indications of how all sides to the conflict in Syria are failing in their duties to respect and protect healthcare workers, patients and hospitals and to distinguish between them and military objectives."
A number of Russian spokesmen today strongly condemned this immoral cant.
"We regret that the world community, including our partners in the United States, reacts more than modestly towards the tragedy with the shelling of our hospital in Syria,"
Dmitri Peskov, Press Secretary for Pres. Putin, said this morning. The evidence suggests that the hospital was deliberately targeted, too. "It was a high-accuracy bombardment. This show that the militants who mounted it had the corresponding coordinates," Peskov said.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov spoke similarly. "We are confident that this attack was planned," he said. "It was planned by those who are trying to retain their positions in Aleppo under the guise of their foreign patrons."
Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov blasted the ICRC statement, in particular.
"This is not just a violation of international law by the ’sides of the conflict,’ as the ICRC statement reads, it is a pre-planned, cold-blooded murder of doctors by militants,"
he said.
"The ICRC, whose president visited the Russian Defense Ministry nearly a week ago, knows perfectly well how Russia helps civilians in Aleppo,"
he added.
Magne Barth, the head of the ICRC delegation in Belarus, Russia, and Moldova, told Interfax in an interview, today, that the attack on the Russian field hospital, which killed two Russian medical workers, "is completely tragic and completely unacceptable."
The attack on the Russian hospital occurred as the U.N. Security Council was debating a new draft resolution, vetoed by Russia and China, calling for a seven-day ceasefire in Aleppo. Lavrov had said, before the U.N. vote, that the resolution contradicted talks in Geneva by U.S. and Russian experts on a plan that would evacuate armed militants from Aleppo before any ceasefire would take effect.
The Syrian Foreign Ministry has issued a statement saying that the attacks on the Russian hospital "clarify again the terrorist nature of the armed groups, which the West insists on describing as moderate..." The statement added that Syria stressed that it will not leave its citizens in the eastern part of Aleppo hostages by terrorists and will exert all possible efforts to liberate them; therefore, it rejects any attempt by any side calling for ceasefire in eastern Aleppo unless it guarantees the exit of all terrorists from it, reports SANA.
Lavrov is to meet with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry in Hamburg on Dec. 8, on the sidelines of a meeting of the Oranization for Cooperation and Security in Europe.
