British foreign minister cancels Moscow visit over ‘developments in Syria’

LONDON: Britain’s Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson has canceled a scheduled visit to Moscow next week, his office announced Saturday, saying “developments in Syria have changed the situation fundamentally.”

“My priority is now to continue contact with the US and others in the run-up to the G-7 meeting on 10-11 April,” said Johnson, who was due to travel to Moscow on Monday.

“We deplore Russia’s continued defense of the Assad regime even after the chemical weapons attack on innocent civilians,” added Johnson.

He then called on Russia to do “everything possible to bring about a political settlement in Syria and work with the rest of the international community to ensure that the shocking events of the last week are never repeated.”

Meanwhile, opposition activists said warplanes struck a northern town where the chemical attack killed scores of people, killing one person and wounding another.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Saturday’s airstrike on the eastern side of Khan Sheikhun killed a woman, marking the first death in the town since Tuesday’s chemical attack that killed 87.

The Local Coordination Committees, another monitoring group, said the airstrike was carried out by a Russian warplane. It said the woman killed had fled to the town from her hometown of Latameh in central Syria.

Arab League chief Ahmed Aboul Gheit warned against a “dangerous escalation” in Syria after the US strike.

“The Arab League rejects regional and international powers’ attempts to politick over the corpses of Syrians or at the cost of its sovereignty,” he told reporters.

“Therefore we demand that all should retreat from this dangerous escalation we are monitoring,” said the secretary-general of the 22-member Arab bloc based in Cairo.

Separately, US-led coalition aircraft struck two locations in northern Syria, killing at least 21 people, including a woman and her six children who were on a boat fleeing clashes between Daesh and US-backed fighters, activist groups said.

Thousands of people in areas held by Daesh are trying to flee the violence as preparations are underway to capture the northern city of Raqqa. Activists and residents have said the militants are forcing civilians to stay in order to use them as human shields once the offensive on Raqqa begins.

The strike occurred in the Shuaib Al-Zeker area, near where the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces are battling Daesh. Hundreds more opposition fighters and their families left the last opposition-held neighborhood of the central city of Homs on Saturday, Syria’s state news agency said.

SANA reported that at least 242 fighters had left Waer along with their families under a deal granting them safe passage to opposition-held territory elsewhere in the country.

source AFP

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