Syria’s nightmare deepens as hospital hit

SYRIA: The humanitarian catastrophe in Syria deepened after an air strike on a hospital in Afrin left sixteen people dead including two pregnant women, as thousands fled the city.

Saturday’s strike, allegedly by Turkey, was in an area where Turkish warplanes are making regular sorties as part of an operation to clear Kurdish militias from the Turkish-Syrian border. Ankara regards the YPG and YPJ groups as terrorists.

But yesterday morning, the Turkish military used its official Twitter channel to reject the allegations.

‘‘The reports claiming that the hospital in Afrin was bombed by the Turkish Armed Forces are fake,’’ it said in a tweet, which included aerial photographs and video of the hospital with a time stamp of later Saturday. No damage was visible.

‘‘During the planning and conduct of the operation, only terrorists and their shelters, weapons and equipment are being targeted while all necessary measures are being taken with utmost care and sensitivity in order not to harm civilian/innocent people and the environment,’’ it added.

More than 15,000 people have fled Afrin in recent days, owing to what the UN called a ‘‘deeply alarming’’ situation for civilians there.

Analyst Mahir Zeynalov called the situation ‘‘very embarrassing’’ for Ankara, which for years condemned Damascus’s attacks on hospitals and was now facing the same allegations.

At the same time, on the other side of the country, at least 10,000 people fled the rebel enclave of Eastern Ghouta as Russian and Syrian warplanes pounded the besieged area.

In recent weeks, evidence has mounted that in addition to the rockets, shelling, air strikes and barrel bombs levied at civilians in Eastern Ghouta, banned chemical weapons may also have been used by government forces and their Russian allies.

Yet in a strange twist, yesterday a senior member of Russia’s military accused American instructors of training the rebels it once supported to carry out a chemical attack.

‘‘It’s reliably known to us that American instructors in the area of the city of al-Tanfa are preparing several groups of fighters for carrying out provocations with the use of chemical weapons,’’ said Colonel Gen Sergei Rudskoi.

This followed similar Russian claims on Wednesday, with a warning that ‘‘in the event of a threat to our military servicemen’s lives, Russia’s Armed Forces will take retaliatory measures to target both the missiles and their vehicles.’’