Russia says coalition drone was in area when Syria aid convoy hit

Russia on Wednesday said a Predator drone from the US-led coalition flew over an aid convoy in Syria when it was destroyed, denying again that it bombed the humanitarian column. "The evening of September 19 in the sky over that area at a height of 3600 metres and moving at a speed of 200 kilometres per hour there was an attack drone from the international coalition that took off from the Incirlik air base in Turkey," Russian military spokesman Igor Konashenkov said. "What is more the aircraft entered the area over the town of Orum al-Kubra, where the convoy was located, several minutes before it burst into flames and left 30 minutes later," he said. Russia's military did not directly accuse the US-led coalition of carrying out a drone attack on the column but pointedly said that the aircraft is capable of "carrying out high-accuracy strikes". Moscow and Washington are locked in a bitter war of words over the attack on the aid trucks and a warehouse on Monday that killed around 20 civilians. A US official told AFP that Washington believes Russian aircraft carried out the strike and that there were two Su-24 jets operating in the area at the time. Konashenkov once again denied Moscow's jets carried out any air strikes on the convoy and said that "they were not even in that area". The Syrian government has also denied that it carried out the attack. The Russian military spokesman said that the US and its allies in the coalition were making the allegations against Moscow to distract attention from a deadly strike against Syrian regime forces over the weekend.