MOSCOW, November 7. /TASS/. The Russian Defense Ministry has described as "another false story" a report by Human Rights Watch, which said that the airstrike on a school in Syria’s Idlib province allegedly carried out on October 26 could be a "war crime," Russian Defense Ministry spokesman, Major General Igor Konashenkov, said on Monday.
"Making public the next accusations of ‘a war crime’ by Human Rights Watch more than a week later, presenting some telephone ‘interviews’ with seven victims as new ‘evidence’ doesn’t stand up to scrutiny and is another false story," Konashenkov said.
He noted that the Russian Defense Ministry had published "a comprehensive and absolute photo evidence from an unmanned aircraft on October 27 showing that there were no traces of an air strike on the school building complex in al-Has." Moreover, no evidence, even indirect, of children’s presence not only in these buildings but also in al-Has itself has been presented to date," Konashenkov noted.
He also drew attention of "the so-called human rights activists" from Human Rights Watch that the Idlib province, including the al-Has populated locality, has been fully controlled by terrorists of the Jabhat al-Nusra (group, outlawed in Russia - TASS).
"So, only outright liars or some crazy persons may say that secular schools built by the government of Bashar al-Assad continue working amid the hostilities on the territory controlled by the Syrian branch of Al-Qaeda (banned in Russia - TASS)," Konashenkov added.