Turkey yesterday called for a ground operation with its global allies to end the war in Syria, as the United Nations announced aid convoys are being sent to besieged towns.
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The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights had said Russian warplanes targeted the hospital in Idlib province, destroying it and killing nine people.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman has rebuffed claims that Russian warplanes struck a hospital in northern Syria.
“It is clear it is the duty of the government of Syria to want to reach every Syrian person wherever they are and allow the United Nations to bring humanitarian aid”, he said in statement.
In another development on Tuesday, Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said some Western countries had called on Moscow not to hit a 100-kilometer corridor on the Syria-Turkey frontier around the city of Azaz in order to keep terrorists’ supply routes open.
Turkish tanks line up on a hill near the border with Syria as Islamic State militants besieged Kobane in 2014.
Abdulrahman Al-Hassan, chief liaison officer at the Syrian Civil Defense, a group of first responders known as the “White Helmets”, said the women’s hospital in Azaz was hit by two surface-to-surface missiles.
“The destruction of the hospital leaves the local population of around 40,000 people without access to medical services in an active zone of conflict”, MSF head of mission Massimiliano Rebaudengo said.
In the same raid, a school where refugees were sheltering was also hit.
Russian air support for the Syrian government offensive has altered the balance of power in the 5-year-old war in the past three weeks.
Syria’s state news agency SANA and the Observatory said Tuesday that government forces took the villages of Ahras and Misqan. After Tel Rifaat, SDF fighters also took the nearby village of Kfar Naseh, south of the town.
The Syrian town of Azaz is located about 20 miles from Aleppo, near the border with Turkey.
The SDF is also advancing in Aleppo itself, according to opposition activists, who say Syrian insurgents repelled an SDF assault on two neighborhoods. “Attacks against health facilities in Syria by the regime or its supporters are unacceptable and must stop immediately”, said Jean-Marc Ayrault, the French foreign minister, reports The Guardian. A Turkish official told reporters in Istanbul that “each time there is fire from Syria, we respond”.
Meanwhile, Turkey and Saudi Arabia have begun posturing about launching a ground assault within Syria, raising the possibility of the conflict escalating to a regional war involving Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and the rebels on one side, the Syrian military, Iran, and Russian Federation on another, and Islamic State on a third. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly on the issue.
Russia’s air strikes have allowed government forces to press a major operation that has virtually encircled rebels in eastern Aleppo city, as well as pushing them from much of the region to the north. “But we could not see any tangible effect of the airstrikes on Daesh, on the contrary, they [the airstrikes] have simplified the group’s job in Syria”, Yilmaz said.
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Syrian ambassador to Moscow, Riad Haddad, on Monday accused the USA of destroying a hospital backed by the humanitarian group MSF(Medecins Sans Frontieres – Doctors without Borders) in Syria.
