Russian forces blamed for air attack on Syrian hospital
Facility was more than 70 km away from nearest terrorist-supporting region
Russia is being blamed for an airstrike on a hospital in the northeastern Syrian city of Hama, continuing a pattern of attacks begun by the regime of Bashar Assad.
While Russia maintains it is striking Islamic State targets in the country, the hospital that was hit Friday was more than 70 kilometres from the nearest Islamic State-supporting region.
Video posted on YouTube, apparently shot in the aftermath of the attack, shows doctors and nurses sprawled out on a floor littered with debris and medical supplies.
The surgeon in the video, Dr. Mahmoud al-Muhammad, condemns Russia for the attack as he leads the camera through the chaotic ward.
“Most of the medical staff are affected after the targeting by the Russian air force,” says al-Muhammad, according to a translation provided to the Star. “We are incapable of working now.”
In a separate incident, Al Jazeera reported this week that activists are blaming Russian warplanes for a bombing that damaged a hospital Saturday in Latakia province near the Turkish border.
Dr. Ammar Zakaria, a Syrian doctor who recently fled to Germany after years of being targeted for his medical work in the country, said he doesn’t believe the Russians are purposely targeting hospitals, but rather are bombing based on information provided by the Syrian government.
Zakaria said he has been told by friends who remain in the country that Russian jets are easily distinguishable by the barrel bomb attacks that medics in the country have grown used to. The Russians are flying high-tech SU-35 fighter jets that can reach supersonic speeds.
“They come without any sound,” said Zakaria.
In a barrel bomb attack, by contrast, the helicopter can be heard approaching, giving some warning as to where the bombs will drop. In such cases, medical staff have “two or three seconds” to lie face-down on the ground or protect the patients, said Zakaria, who now works for a German branch of the Union of Syrian Medical Relief Organizations, also known by its French abbreviation UOSSM.
In keeping with the care being taken to protect medical staff, the hospital that was bombed Friday was hidden in the basement of an otherwise abandoned-looking building.
“We make our hospitals as far away from the commanders’ positions and the fronts as possible,” Zakaria said.
Mark Cameron, a Canadian emergency medical responder who has spent a significant amount of time inside Syria since 2011, said he doubts the hospital was bombed accidentally. “They’re not a joke air force. I think when they’re lining up a building in their fighter jet (sights), they know what they’re hitting,” he said.
Cameron added that he suspects the Russians believe the hospital is treating soldiers from the moderate Free Syrian Army, who are opponents of Assad.
“(Hospital staff ) are just treating wounded people, they don’t care who they are,” Cameron said.
Cameron’s organization, the Canadian International Medical Relief Organization, encourages hospitals to ban guns in order to remove any possible legitimacy from airstrikes.
Medical organizations inside Syria have stopped reporting their facilities’ locations to the UN, Zakaria said. He suspects the UN handed over locations of hospitals to the regime in the belief the hospitals would be spared.
“The UN gave the regime the location of our hospitals; a week later the regime targeted all the hospitals, one missile each,” said Zakaria, adding that he doesn’t think the UN had bad intentions.
The chief of the Hama medical directorate could not be reached. Following the bombing he, along with the hospital’s staff and patients, took refuge in a cave, Zakaria said.