Air raids hit four hospitals in Syrias Aleppo
AFP
AFP, BEIRUT: Air raids have hit four makeshift hospitals in Syrias battered Aleppo city, doctors said Sunday, jeopardising medical care for more than 200,000 desperate civilians in rebel-held areas.
The bombardment since Saturday has worsened the plight of residents of besieged eastern neighbourhoods of Syrias second city, where food and medical supplies are becoming increasingly scarce.
The hospitals, as well as a blood bank that was hit, were located in the Al-Shaar neighbourhood, said the Independent Doctors Association, a group of Syrian doctors that supports clinics in Aleppo.
It said a two-day-old baby was killed in the childrens hospital when his oxygen supply was cut after a raid during the early hours of Sunday. It was the second strike on the same hospital in about nine hours, according to the IDA.
After the second strike, we had to move him (the baby) downstairs to the bomb shelter, and thats why he died, said Malika, the head nurse at the childrens hospital.
The hospital is severely damaged and its not the first time, she said, in online conversations with IDA representatives seen by AFP.
Footage posted by the IDA of the strikes aftermath showed agitated doctors carrying a tiny baby in a room lined with incubators, with sandbags piled high just outside the entrance.
All four hospitals and the blood bank were out of service on Sunday, the citys opposition-run health directorate confirmed in a statement.
It warned that doctors are not able to get any wounded people out or any medicine in to this devastated city. Opposition-controlled areas of Aleppo are regularly hit by air strikes by the regime and its key ally Russia. According to the World Health Organisation, Syria was the most dangerous place for health care workers to operate last year, with 135 attacks on health facilities and workers in 2015.
