It said the attacks were the worst week for attacks on medical facilities in that region since the Syrian conflict began in 2011.
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Syrian fighters from a rebel group considered “moderate” by Washington are responsible for using toxic gas shells that killed seven and injured 23 in Aleppo on Tuesday, according to a statement from the Russian Ministry of Defense.
Syrian forces bombed six hospitals in and around Aleppo in the past week, making it the worst week for attacks on medical facilities in the country since the Syrian civil war began in 2011, the USA -based aid group Physicians for Human Rights said.
Aleppo has been fought over for years, but in recent months, the Syrian military, and a group of rebels dominated by the Nusra Front, have picked up the pace, shelling one another’s neighborhoods.
It was Syria’s commercial hub until 2012, when clashes left it roughly divided between the government-held west and rebels in the east.
Some 250,000 civilians live under siege in Aleppo’s rebel-held areas since government forces cut them off in July.
“We continue to believe that no one has an interest in further escalating the military situation in Aleppo in a way that would impede humanitarian aid and also impede chances of political settlement”, he said. It was unknown where the alleged convoy was traveling to, or who carried out the attack.
Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said on Wednesday that the government had been launching a counterattack on areas captured by rebels in the past two days.
“The opposition offensive has not achieved the results that were expected at this stage”.
The Aleppo offensive groups fighters from Al-Qaeda’s former Syria affiliate, the powerful Islamist Ahrar al-Sham and other groups. Rebel rockets hit a hospital on the government side of the city a few days later.
Video footage released by the rebels purports to show fighters inside the facility, inspecting captured weapons and equipment. Opposition forces laid responsibility for the attack on President Bashar al-Assad’s forces.
Wednesday’s edition of Al Watan, a newspaper close to the government, said government forces, backed by Russian air strikes, “advanced again south and southwest of Aleppo causing major setbacks” for rebel factions. Even if, or when, the government retakes the alleged target stretch of Syria, it will still face the massive task of rebuilding a shattered economy and wrestling back control from militias and profiteers who have built robust patronage networks that rival the traditional hierarchies of the Assad family’s authoritarian rule. We consider the proposal deeply flawed on humanitarian grounds and consider it [a] warning for the International Syria Support Group (ISSG) to urgently step up efforts to end the use of brutal siege tactics and illegal attacks on civilians.
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Residents said the barrel bomb attack had used chlorine gas, but the monitor could not confirm this.
