Six days of air strikes and rebel shelling in Aleppo, which is split between government forces and rebels, have killed about 200 people in the city, two-thirds of them on the opposition side, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
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Speaking to reporters after a meeting of the taskforce created in February by the 17-nation International Syria Support Group (ISSG), he warned that “the lifeline to hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people… may be broken”.
Dr. Rami Kalazi, a neurosurgeon who works in a hospital in Aleppo, tells Newsweek that in addition to pediatric care-al-Quds was the only hospital in the area with a neonatal ICU-it was also the most important hospital for internal and gynecological medicine.
“The stakes are so incredibly high”, said Jan Egeland, who heads an worldwide humanitarian taskforce for the war-ravaged country.
A Syrian military source said government planes had not been in areas where air raids were reported.
The agency, also known as the White Helmets, said the hospital and adjacent buildings were struck in four consecutive airstrikes.
At least 14 patients and staff, including at least three doctors, were killed, MSF said.
A wave of airstrikes and shelling killed more than 60 people in less than 24 hours in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo, monitors and activists said Thursday.
“MSF categorically condemns this outrageous targeting of yet another medical facility in Syria”, said in a statement Muskilda Zancada, the medical charity’s head of mission in Syria.
The Russian Defence Ministry, whose air strikes have swung the war in favour of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, could not immediately be reached for comment. The hospital was supported by both Doctors Without Borders and the ICRC.
Government forces fired on the protesters, killing scores.
The hospital has been one of the main medical centers operating in Aleppo since the city became deeply divided in 2012. He denounced the intensive bombing as an attempt by Assad’s government to drive the residents of Aleppo out, labeling it “a crime of ethnic and sectarian cleansing”. They’re hitting everything, mosques, markets, residential buildings, field hospitals.
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A burned, flaming vehicle is seen after an airstrike in the rebel-held area of Aleppo’s Bustan al-Qasr, Syria, April 28.
