US Secretary of State John Kerry called for the Syrian and Russian governments to face a war-crimes investigation over attacks on civilians in Syria.
Speaking in Washington alongside French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, Kerry said Russia and Syria had a "targeted strategy to terrorise civilians and kill anybody who is in the way of their military objectives."
In Geneva, the United Nations put the death toll in rebel-occupied eastern Aleppo at 377 over the past two weeks, with 1286 injured. Actual figures, a UN spokesman said, "were expected to be higher." Repeated bombing of hospitals had left only six operating medical facilities and 30 doctors to serve a population of a quarter-million civilians.
![US Secretary of State John Kerry has called for Russia and Syria to be investigated for war crimes. Photo / AP](https://www.nzherald.co.nz/resizer/v2/37ZBVYQFTID3DWLGZGYQKL3FIQ.jpg?auth=22b8f0082ac4fa1282125e269ba086299360a30cdba4328b12da3f16ace30d5a&width=16&height=11&quality=70&smart=true)
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov called Kerry's statements "unacceptable judgments." Repeating Moscow's charge that the United States has failed to comply with a US- Russia negotiated cease-fire last month that collapsed within a few days with renewed Syrian and Russian bombing, Ryabkov criticised "high-ranking" US officials who "are trying to lecture us and talk to us in an unacceptably conceited and arrogant tone."