Hospitals hit in intensified Syria fighting

BEIRUT — Intensified fighting in Syria in recent weeks has damaged more hospitals, with at least 10 medical facilities hit over the past 10 days and hundreds of thousands of people cut off from health care, the International Committee of the Red Cross said on Thursday.

The escalation in fighting has also forced hundreds of schools across the country to suspend classes over the past two weeks, with teachers sending children home in terror as bombs and shells fall nearby, Save the Children said.

The violence has been the worst the war-torn country has seen since government forces captured the rebel-held eastern part of the city of Aleppo last December. ICRC said it’s alarmed by reports of hundreds of civilian casualties and the destruction of hospitals and schools.

“We have seen an increasingly worrying spike in military operations that correlates with high levels of civilian casualties,” said Marianne Gasser, head of ICRC’S delegation in Syria.

Fighting has been especially heavy in recent weeks in central, northern and eastern Syria between Russian-backed government forces and rival insurgent groups. The violence is also taking place in de-escalation zones that are part of a deal reached in the Kazakh capital of Astana between Iran, Turkey and Russia.

With swelling numbers of civilians fleeing, some camps around the northern province of Raqqa and in the eastern region of Deir el-zour are receiving over 1,000 women, children and men daily, the statement said.

Syrian troops and the U.s.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces have been gaining ground from the Islamic State group in both provinces over the past months. Their separate but simultaneous attacks have led thousands of people to flee Is-held areas that have come under intense airstrikes by Russian warplanes.