He told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show that it was right to ask whether Russian forces had deliberately targeted civilians. Eighteen lorries and a warehouse were destroyed and 20 people killed in last Monday’s attack.
Russia denied responsibility, blaming rebel shelling or a US drone.
Mr Johnson also said Russia was “guilty of protracting” the war in Syria and of “making it far more hideous”.
His comments came as Aleppo sustained heavy bombing, with the Syrian government saying it had launched an offensive to retake rebel-held areas. In the latest fighting, rebel forces in the city were reported to have retaken the Palestinian refugee camp of Handarat, on elevated ground north of the city. The strategic area fell to government troops on Saturday. The UN Security Council is due to meet on Sunday morning in New York to discuss Aleppo. The meeting was requested by the US, the UK and France. United Nations special envoy Staffan de Mistura described last week’s attack, on an aid convoy and Syrian Arab Red Crescent warehouse outside Aleppo, as an “outrage”. The US said two Russian warplanes were involved in the attack.
Mr Johnson appeared to go further, saying the convoy could have been deliberately targeted. Russian President Vladimir Putin was “not only… handing [Syrian President Bashar] Assad the revolver”, he told the BBC’s Andrew Marr programme. “He is in some instances actually firing the revolver himself.
“We should be looking at whether or not that targeting is done in the knowledge that those are wholly innocent civilian targets. That is a war crime.” The attack prompted the UN to temporarily suspend aid deliveries in Syria. Heavy bombardments of rebel-held areas of Aleppo by government forces have continued throughout the week after a truce brokered by Moscow and Washington collapsed. UN chief Ban Ki-moon was “appalled by the chilling military escalation” in Aleppo, his spokesman said on Saturday.
“Since the announcement two days ago by the Syrian army of an offensive to capture eastern Aleppo, there have been repeated reports of air strikes involving the use of incendiary weapons and advanced munitions such as bunker-buster bombs,” the statement said. The northern city of Aleppo has become a key battleground in Syria’s bloody five-year civil war. The UN says the attacks on Aleppo have left nearly two million people without water. UK-based group monitoring the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 25 people were killed in bombardments on Saturday.
Activists say both Syrian and Russian warplanes are taking part in the latest offensive, though Russia has not confirmed its involvement.
Russia supports the Syrian government, while the US backs the opposition. The two powers accuse each other of failing to rein in their respective allies on the ground.
Meanwhile, At least seven people-six of them children-were killed in a barrel bombing of opposition-held eastern Aleppo Sunday, an activist group reported, as the Syrian government continues its furious offensive in the wake of a collapsed ceasefire, adds CNN.
The barrel bombs, launched from helicopters, struck the city’s Bustan al-Pasha neighborhood, according to the Aleppo Media Center, an opposition-affiliated group of activists which works to document the conflict.
The United Nations Security Council is to meet Sunday to discuss the devastating Syrian government offensive on Aleppo that has raged since a shaky ceasefire deal fell apart last week.
The session, to begin at 11 a.m. ET, was requested by the United States, Britain and France in the wake of the regime’s military push to retake rebel-held parts of eastern Aleppo in recent days, a UN source confirmed to CNN.
The opposition says the violence has been even more intense than before the ceasefire took hold.
Hundreds of airstrikes have pummeled the city since the Syrian government, backed by Russia, announced a renewed, “comprehensive” offensive on Thursday following the collapse of the short-lived ceasefire. The offensive, involving ground troops as well as air power, has targeted rebel positions across the country, inflicting “heavy losses” on them, the state-run Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) reported.
Residents in the opposition-held east of Aleppo, where more than 250,000 civilians are besieged by government forces, reported ongoing barrel bomb attacks Sunday.
A Syrian family leaves the area following a reported airstrike on Friday, September 23, in rebel-held east Aleppo. Following the airstrike, recovery teams from Syria Civil Defense, known as the White Helmets, began working to free the trapped and recover the dead, including small children.
On Saturday, Syrian government troops and supporting militia made their first major ground advance of the assault on Aleppo, seizing control of the Handarat Palestinian refugee camp on the city’s northeastern outskirts, while warplanes bombarded the opposition-held east, according to state-run SANA.
Rebels then launched a counter-offensive to try to retake the area, according to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR). There were conflicting reports as to the outcome of the fighting.
