The trucks are waiting at the Öncüpınar border gate with Syria in southern Kilis province. (Photo: Cihan)
Hundreds of trucks drivers wait tensely near the Öncüpınar border gate with Syria in southern Kilis province after seven people were killed and 10 were wounded in Russian strikes that hit a convoy taking supplies to refugees in the Azaz area of Halep province in Syria on Wednesday.
Video footage taken at a crossing on the Syrian side of the border of Turkey’s Kilis province on Wednesday showed burning trucks after what aid workers have said was an apparent air strike.
The head of the rebel-run border crossing on the Syrian side said separately that air strikes hit a garage for commercial trailer trucks, killing three people.
“Our teams helped to extinguish the fire … The trucks do not belong to us and there is no information on who bombed them,” Mustafa Özbek, an İstanbul-based official from the Humanitarian Relief Foundation (İHH), told Reuters.
The aid worker who filmed the aftermath initially said it appeared to be that the aid trucks were targeted. It was not immediately clear if the strikes were carried out by Russian or Syrian warplanes. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) had reported earlier on Thursday that there were intensive Russian airstrikes in Azaz.
Syrian activists: There have been fresh airstrikes near Turkish border
Two groups that track the war — the UK-based SOHR and the Local Coordination Committees — say air strikes hit the highway linking the border town of Azaz with the Bab al-Salameh border crossing to Turkey.
They had no immediate word on casualties. The SOHR has said the warplanes that carried out Thursday’s airstrikes were Russian.
The Western-backed Syrian National Coalition, the main Syrian opposition group, condemned the bombing of Azaz, saying it targeted trucks carrying aid supplies.