Intensified fighting in Syria

Red Cross alarmed by casualties

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.

According to an ICRC statement, 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 deescalation 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 military operations, 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 every day, 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 ISheld areas that have come under intense airstrikes by Russian warplanes and those of the U.S.-led coalition.

On Wednesday, government forces kicked out IS fighters form the central province of Hama, ending a three-year presence of the extremists in the central region that has a religiously mixed population.

The Russian Defence Ministry, meanwhile, said its submarines fired 10 cruise missiles on Thursday at Islamic State positions outside the eastern Syrian town of Mayadeen, one of the last major IS strongholds in the country.

Russia has been a key backer of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces and has helped government troops gain significant ground from opposition fighters and militant groups.