AFP, ALEPPO, Syria: Regime aircraft pounded rebel areas of Syria’s second city Aleppo on Friday, hitting a clinic just days after a strike destroyed a hospital, killing two doctors and sparking an international outcry. More than 200 civilians have been killed in Aleppo over the past week as rebels have pounded government-held neighbourhoods with rocket and artillery fire and the regime has hit rebel areas with air raids. The bloodshed has brought a February 27 ceasefire between government forces and non-jihadist rebels to the verge of collapse and raised fears of a humanitarian crisis in the northern metropolis and other battleground areas.
A nurse was among several people wounded when the air strike hit the clinic in the rebel-held Al-Marja neighbourhood, the civil defence known as the White Helmets said.
The clinic, which had been providing dental services and treatment for chronic illnesses for about five years, was badly damaged.
An AFP photographer said he heard nearly a dozen air raids within the space of a few minutes, followed by the wail of ambulances.
“The planes didn’t sleep and didn’t let us sleep either,” one resident of the densely populated Bustan al-Qasr district told AFP.
“The earth is shaking beneath our feet.”
At least two civilians were killed in the strikes on Friday, one of them a child, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
The rebels bombarded government-held areas with rocket and artillery fire, killing three people as they were leaving a mosque after the main weekly prayers, state television reported. In rebel areas, Friday prayers were cancelled because of the air strikes.
It was the second time this week that an air strike had hit one of the few medical facilities still operating in rebel areas.
Late on Wednesday, air strikes hit the Al-Quds hospital and a nearby block of flats in the Sukkari neighbourhood, killing 30 people, including one of the last paediatricians still working in the east of the city.
US Secretary of State John Kerry expressed “outrage” over the hit on the hospital, saying it appeared to be “a deliberate strike on a known medical facility.”
He called on Moscow to press its Damascus ally “to stop attacking civilians, medical facilities, and first responders, and to abide fully by the cessation of hostilities.”
Al-Quds was supported by both Doctors Without Borders and the International Committee of the Red Cross.