Rebel forces capture Syrian hospital
At least 61 killed in battle for facility near Aleppo; airstrikes claim 6 more
BEIRUT — Syrian rebels seized control of a hospital near Aleppo, giving a boost to anti-government forces in the northern city after days of relentless airstrikes on opposition-held neighborhoods there, activists said Saturday.
The rebels’ capture of Kindi hospital does not drastically alter the broader battle for Aleppo, which has been divided for more than a year between opposition and government forces. But it does provide a lift to a rebel movement that has been dogged in recent months by infighting that allowed President Bashar Assad’s forces to chip away at rebel-held territory on several fronts.
For months, rebels had been trying to capture Kindi hospital, which is close to the besieged prison on the edge of town where the government is thought to be holding thousands of detainees.
The hospital fell to the rebels Friday, according to two activist groups — the Aleppo Media Center and the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Aleppo-based activist Abu al-Hassan Marea said the rebels who overran the hospital included conservative Muslim groups and al-Qaida-linked factions.
Director Rami Abdurrahman of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 42 government soldiers were killed in Friday’s fighting, as well as about 19 Syrian rebels and an unknown number of foreign fighters.
A Syrian freelance photographer who worked for foreign news outlets, including Reuters, also was killed in the fighting, activists said. The photographer, Molhem Barakat, was with his brother, a rebel fighter, inside a carpet factory near the hospital when they were both killed, said Hassoun Abu Faisal of the Aleppo Media Center. Activists circulated a photograph of Barakat’s corpse, which matched other images of him.
Abu Faisal said Barakat, who activists said was 18 years old, began working as a photographer about five months ago and quickly started selling photographs to foreign media.
Media watchdog groups have ranked Syria the world’s most dangerous country for reporters. The Committee to Protect Journalists said 22 journalists have been killed in Syria this year, not counting Barakat. More than 30 journalists are thought to be held by the Syrian government or rebel forces.
Meanwhile, Syrian government forces continued dumping so-called barrel bombs — containers holding hundreds of pounds of explosives and fuel — over opposition-held parts of Aleppo. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least six people were killed in Saturday’s air raids, but other groups gave higher death tolls.
The aid group Doctors Without Borders has said that over four days last week, government airstrikes killed at least 189 people and wounded 879.
Human Rights Watch, meanwhile, said in a statement Saturday that the airstrikes in Aleppo were indiscriminate and unlawful.
“Government forces have really been wreaking disaster on Aleppo in the last month, killing men, women and children alike,” said Ole Solvang, senior emergencies researcher at the New York-based group. “The Syrian air force is either criminally incompetent, doesn’t care whether it kills scores of civilians or deliberately targets civilian areas.”
Meanwhile, the International Committee of the Red Cross handed over to British officials Saturday the body of a U.K. doctor who died last week in Syrian government custody.
The circumstances in which Abbas Khan, a 32-yearold orthopedic surgeon from London, died while in detention in Syria remain in dispute. A senior British official has accused Assad’s government of having a hand in Khan’s death, while Syrian authorities say the doctor committed suicide and there was no sign of violence or abuse.
On Saturday, a Red Cross convoy carrying Khan’s body from Damascus arrived in Lebanon’s capital, Beirut, where British officials received it, the Red Cross said in a statement.
In London, the Foreign Office said in a statement that “responsibility for Dr. Khan’s death lies with the Syrian authorities and we are pressing for answers about what happened.”
Khan’s death came only days before he apparently was due to be freed, said British lawmaker George Galloway, who had been negotiating with Syrian authorities to secure the doctor’s release. Galloway said he’d been told that Assad had ordered the doctor’s release and that Khan had been expected home before Christmas.
Syria’s civil war, now in its third year, has killed more than 120,000 people, according to activists, while millions have been forced from their homes by the fighting.