Russia Calls Hopes for Restoring Syria Cease-Fire ‘Very Weak’

John Kerry, U.S. secretary of state, listens as U.S. President Barack Obama, not pictured, speaks during a nomination announcement of Jeh Johnson, former Pentagon general counsel and U.S. President Barack Obama's nominee as secretary of Homeland Security, in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Friday, Oct. 18, 2013. Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

Russia said it’s pessimistic about restoring a collapsed week-old cease-fire in Syria as it pledged to investigate reports of a deadly attack on a humanitarian aid convoy.

Hopes of renewing the truce “are very weak for the moment,” President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on a conference call on Tuesday. “We’re extremely concerned about the situation.”

Syrian state television on Monday cited the country’s military as saying the cease-fire had ended. This came amid reports that President Bashar al-Assad’s forces launched fresh attacks on Aleppo and targeted an aid convoy west of the city after scores of his troops died in a U.S.-led bombing.

The cease-fire is the latest effort by Russia and the U.S. to ease the 5 1/2-year conflict in Syria. The war has killed at least 280,000 people and caused millions to flee, provoking the worst refugee crisis in Europe since World War II and helping to create a haven for Islamic State to conduct a global terror campaign.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry who announced the accord with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Geneva Sept. 9, said Monday in New York that the onus was on Moscow to rein in Assad’s forces. The cease-fire went into force last week and was supposed to pave the way for the U.S. and Russia to cooperate on targeting Islamic extremist groups in the Middle Eastern country.

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The remarks suggested a more downbeat outlook after Kerry had insisted earlier in the day that the cease-fire was holding and that humanitarian goods had begun to flow into the area around Aleppo after days of delay.

The U.S. hasn’t fulfilled a commitment to separate moderate opposition groups in Syria from terrorists within the agreed period, Peskov said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a U.K.-based opposition monitoring group, said Syrian or Russian jets had targeted Aleppo and the surrounding region more than 40 times, including by hitting the aid convoy in the town of Urem al-Kubra. The strike killed 12 people, mostly truck drivers and staff of the Syrian Red Crescent, according to SOHR, which monitors the conflict through activists on the ground. In total more than 30 people died and dozens were injured in Monday’s attacks, the group said.

After sporadic violations in recent days, the deal suffered a grievous blow over the weekend when U.S.-led coalition planes struck a Syrian army base, killing 62 soldiers and wounding more than 100. Russia then called the agreement “meaningless” because the U.S. had been unable to influence moderate opposition groups in the country.

The U.S. and Russian accord had sought to bring seven days of calm and fresh relief to civilians in the besieged northern city of Aleppo. After that, the goal was for Moscow and Washington to begin an unprecedented joint effort to coordinate air strikes on Islamic extremist groups in Syria while grounding Assad’s air force in those areas.