Without assigning blame, MSF confirmed a hospital supported by the charity was hit in Idlib, northwest Syria, and said seven people were killed and at least eight were missing, presumed dead.
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“We condemn this attack which appears to have been deliberately conducted against a health facility”, MSF head of mission in Syria Massimiliano Rebaudengo said in a Monday statement.
“The hospitals hit today have been rendered completely non-functioning…such attacks, whether deliberate or not, deprive people of the very limited services still available in the country”, a spokeswoman for the International Committee of the Red Cross said.
In Azaz, near the Turkish border, at least 12 people were killed in an attack on two hospitals and two schools, reports said.
The United States also condemned the attacks on civilian targets, which it said included two hospitals in the Aleppo area – a Medecins Sans Frontieres facility and the Women’s and Children’s Hospital in Aziz city.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitor, said the raids were believed to have been carried out by Russian warplanes.
The 30-bed hospital had 54 staff members, two operating theaters, an outpatient department an emergency room. MSF has been supporting the hospital since September and covered all its needs, including providing medical supplies and running costs, it said.
Turkey is carrying out intensive cross-border artillery strikes on Syrian-Kurdish fighters as they advance – backed by Russian air power – into territory held by rebels opposed to President Assad. The strikes in Azaz hit near a hospital, it said.
The fighting in Syria has intensified despite Friday’s call in Munich for an end to hostilities in a civil war that has killed more than 260 000 people since it began five years ago.
He cautioned that Turkey would render the Menagh air base, north of the city of Aleppo, “unusable” unless the YPG, which seized it at the weekend, swiftly withdrew.
According to UNICEF, three other medical facilities were targeted as well as a school in the region.
Missiles also hit a hospital in the town of Marat Numan in the province of Idlib, south of Aleppo.
It said an affiliated hospital was bombed in Daraa province in southern Syria on Feb 9.
Rescue workers and rights groups say Russian bombing has killed scores of civilians at market places, hospitals, schools and residential areas in Syria.
In October 2015, the US mistakenly attacked a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, killing 30 hospital staff and patients.
Opposition activist Yahya al-Sobeih, speaking by phone from Maaret al-Numan, said “the entire building has collapsed on the ground”.
A Turkish official says Ankara received with astonishment Washington calls on Turkey to hold fire against U.S.-backed Kurdish forces in Syria.
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European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini branded the Idlib attack “unacceptable” and urged “all parties (to respect) basic principles of humanitarian law”.
