‘Blood of Aleppo citizens on Russia’s, Iran’s hands’ – Obama

Outgoing US President Barack Obama has accused the Syrian government and its allies Russia and Iran of slaughtering citizens in Aleppo.

“We have seen a deliberate strategy of surrounding, besieging and starving innocent civilians,” Obama said in his final end-of-year press conference. “Responsibility for this brutality lies in one place alone: the Assad regime and its allies Russia and Iran. The blood for these atrocities are on their hands.

“Over the long term, the Assad regime cannot slaughter its way to legitimacy. The Syrian regime and its Russian and Iranian allies are trying to obfuscate the truth. The world shall not be fooled, and the world will not forget.”

During the press conference, Obama also claimed that a September confrontation with Russian President Vladimir Putin prompted Moscow to cease its cyberattacks against failed Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton during the recent election campaign.

During a meeting on the sidelines of the G20 summit in China, Obama said he had told Putin to “cut it out” and warned him “there were going to be serious consequences” if he didn’t.

“In fact we did not see further tampering of the election process,” Obama said. “But the leaks through Wikileaks had already occurred.”

Obama also insisted that there was no "squabbling" between his White House and the incoming administration led by Donald Trump, insisting that a roiling debate over Russia's intrusion into the US election should be confronted on a bipartisan basis.

"What we have simply said are the facts," Obama said. "Based on uniform intelligence assessments, the Russians were responsible for hacking the DNC, and as a consequence, it is important for us to review all elements of that and make sure we are preventing that kind of interference through cyberattacks in the future."

"That shouldn't be a partisan issue. My hope is the President-elect is similarly going to be concerned that we don't have foreign influence in our election process."