US secretary John Kerry intense attack on Russia at UN read more at here www.spinonews.com/index.php/item/947-us-secretary-john-kerry-intense-attack-on-russia-at-un

Secretary of State Kerry spoke immediately after Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov at a United Nations Security Council meeting in New York about the five-year Syrian war.

John Kerry launched a serious attack on Russia Wednesday for its actions in Syria, pointing to the bombing of a UN aid convoy that left more than 20 dead and its inability to stop continued Syrian air attacks.

Listened to my colleague from Russia and I sort of felt like we're in a parallel universe here," Kerry said of their differing accounts of the conflict.

He called for all planes in key areas of Syria to be immediately grounded and for countries to stop supporting those who sabotage ceasefire efforts. 

Kerry also questioned how the US-supported opposition can engage in political talks to resolve the conflict when the Syrian regime, backed by Russia, doesn't halt its attacks.

 Russia was tasked with restraining Syria during this latest attempt at a ceasefire, undertaken last wee

The diplomatic clashing of swords highlights just how hard it has been to take even the first steps toward calming the Syrian conflict enough to begin political talks.

The Russians have denied that they were behind the attack on the UN convoy and instead have offered a series of explanations that Kerry detailed at the Security Council meeting.

Russia initially said that the strike was a necessary response to an alleged offensive by an al-Qaeda-linked terror group, Kerry said. Then Russia claimed they were bombing elsewhere, then that the aid convoy had been followed by militants with mortars, and then that the trucks caught fire.

"The trucks and the food and the medicine just spontaneously combusted," Kerry said. "Anybody here believe that?" he asked. The bombing attacks on hospitals and children are "flagrant violations of international law," he added.

He also took the US to task for an airstrike on Saturday that killed 62 Syrian soldiers, calling it a deliberate and unacceptable aggression. The US has said it was an accident.

Kerry's scathing 28-minute speech to the Security Council also pressed the need to return to a 2012 plan to create a political transition in Syria.

The US has said that Russia bears responsibility for the attack on the convoy because they were the only two countries flying planes over the area at that time and Russia had pledged to restrain Syria.

Half of Syria's population has been uprooted, many of them fleeing to Europe, and well over 300,000 men, women and children have been killed, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon told the meeting.