US State Department spokesman John Kirby today accused Russian warplanes of hitting an unnamed Syrian hospital in an undisclosed part of Syria at some time during the past month of airstrikes. He offered no details, and cited “press reports” as leading him to this conclusion.
The “press reports” appear to center around a claim from the White Helmets, a group that is bankrolled in part by the State Department, that a Russian warplane hit a hospital near al-Qaeda-held Idlib. There were questions about the identity of the plane that launched the strike, however, with Russia insisting they are not using cluster munitions in Syria, as the plane in the video was shown doing.
The White Helmets have been seen playing somewhat fast and loose with evidence since Russia joined the war, though Doctors Without Borders (MSF) did say that 12 hospitals across Syria have been hit in recent weeks. They offered no indication who launched any of those strikes, however, and the Red Cross today said they were “unaware” of any specific incident proven to be a Russian strike.
The timing of the allegations, and the flat refusal of Kirby to offer the secret evidence he claims the US has to prove them, is noteworthy, coming amid ongoing US efforts at damage control over their own attack on a hospital in Afghanistan earlier this month, and their total silence on a recent Saudi attack on a hospital in Yemen.
These days these people just talk for the sake of talking.
State Dept. Believes Russian Military Hit a Syrian Hospital
Watch this get uncritically reported in western media.
Blatant attempt at directing attention away from US war crimes in Afghanistan – "unnamed hospital", "undisclosed part of Syria". I was tempted to say you couldn't make it up, but the US State Department clearly does.
More garbage churned out by the USG propaganda war machine
to cover its own atrocities.
A rather foolish article! The different treatment accorded to this event compared to the Afghan hospital simply highlights the essentailly propaganda nature of this website. That's not news and the propaganda is laid on so thick that it will fool nobody but it is noteworthy that authors no longer even pretend to provide accurate information. You'd almost say that they've given up on themselves.
"You'd almost say that they've given up on themselves."
Um, no. YOU would say that. There's certainly some propaganda floating around here. You're one of the major sources of that. Not to say that you're ALWAYS wrong, but neither is a stopped clock. You are here to insert something anti-Putin into every discussion. No problem with you doing that, of course, but given that that's your only purpose, and that your checklist of talking points to recycle is getting pretty old and boring even on the rare occasions when it has any connection to reality at all, you might want to re-think calling attention to what you're doing by accusing others of doing it.
Mr. Knapp,
I just skip Kenny's comments; he is not worth reading and even less responding to. Let him be his only audience.
Miriam,
I envy you the luxury of skipping his comments. Since I moderate comments for Antiwar.com, I have no choice but to read any and all of his — or at least those that the spam filters catch and that have to be read and approved or deleted (as non-valuable as I personally find his comments, they don't violate our guidelines, so they get approved).
"The different treatment accorded to this event compared to the Afghan hospital simply highlights the essentailly propaganda nature of this website."
One is an unsupported non-specific allegation made by proven liars, the other is an undisputed proven event. Are you honestly claiming that you don't understand the difference?
The difference in the treatment of the hospital bombings, is that the one in Afghanistan has been admitted to, and fully vetted. The one in Syria is in the stratosphere of speculation.
Russian Intelligence Agency stated that information gained from reconnaissance aircraft pinpointed the location as heavily frequented by u.s. "advisors" – perhaps as a possible arms depot for it's special ops troops.