Air strikes on hospital in Aleppo; aid in jeopardy
City’s last paediatrician also dies in attack on Al Quds hospital
geneva — The situation in Aleppo is “catastrophic” after deadly overnight air strikes on a hospital in a rebel-held area of the Syrian city, and aid deliveries to millions of Syrians are in jeopardy, the United Nations said on Thursday.
An aid convoy was hit by a mortar round near Homs this week while another was forced to stop due to air raids, said Jan Egeland, chairman of the UN humanitarian task force for Syria.
A hospital in a rebel-controlled district of Aleppo, Syria’s commercial hub before the civil war broke out five years ago, killed at least 27 people including three children and the city’s last paediatrician, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group.
Doctors have been killed, health workers have been killed and medical workers have been blocked from coming to their patients. Jan Egeland UN humanitarian task force chief in Syria
“The stakes are so incredibly high because so many civilian lives are at stake,” Egeland told reporters in Geneva. “Doctors have been killed, health workers have been killed and medical workers have been blocked from coming to their patients,” he said, speaking after a weekly meeting of major and regional powers in the International Syria Support Group.
beirut — Air strikes hit a hospital in a rebel-held area of Syria’s Aleppo and killed at least 27 people, including three children and the city’s last paediatrician, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Thursday.
The Al Quds hospital was supported by international medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), which said it was destroyed after being hit by a direct air strike that killed at least three doctors.
The head of a rescue service put the death toll at 50, saying most of the dead were in a building next door. Aleppo has been the epicentre of a military escalation that has helped to undermine UN-led peace talks in recent weeks. A cessation of hostilities agreement has unravelled and fighting has resumed on numerous fronts in western Syria.
The city is divided into areas held by the government and rebels. The Britain-based Observatory said 91 civilians had been killed in air strikes in the past six days in Aleppo and 49 civilians were killed in rebel shelling of governmentheld areas.
“Destroyed #MSF-supported hospital in Aleppo was well known locally and hit by direct air strike on Wednesday. Hospitals are #notatarget,” an MSF Twitter account said.
Bebars Mishal of the Civil Defence in Aleppo said that 40 people had been killed in a five-storey building next to the hospital.
A Syrian military source said government warplanes had not been used in areas where air strikes were reported.
The Russian defence ministry, which is also conducting air strikes in Syria in support of President Bashar Al Assad, could not immediately be reached for comment. Russia has previously denied hitting civilian targets in Syria.
The Syrian state news agency Sana said nine people had been killed in rebel shelling of residential areas of Aleppo on Thursday.
The Syrian military source said the army has been responding to insurgent attacks in Aleppo, add- ing: “If the militants continue using this fire and bombardment of civilians, the army will certainly not be quiet about it.”
UN envoy Staffan de Mistura said on Thursday the cessation of hostilities agreement was “barely alive”.
Meanwhile, the International Committee of the Red Cross said the escalating violence in Aleppo city is pushing people living under bombardment and shelling to the brink of a humanitarian disaster.
In a statement, it said the intense battles in Aleppo had worsened the humanitarian plight of thousands of residents in the city that it described as one of the worst affected in the past five years of conflict.
Peace talks he has convened in Geneva were undermined last week when the main opposition alliance walked out, citing ongoing violence and calling for proper implementation of a UN resolution requiring full humanitarian access to besieged areas.