Suicide strikes Aleppo hospital as Assad forces advance in city

The largest hospital in rebel-held east Aleppo was bombed on Saturday for the second time in days as Syrian government forces pressed a Russian-backed offensive to retake the entire city. 

Doctors Without Borders (MSF) decried the “bloodbath,” saying the battleground city’s eastern rebel-held portion had become “a giant kill box.”
Russia warned the United States against carrying out any attacks on Syrian government forces, saying it would have repercussions across the Middle East.
Aleppo, once Syria’s vibrant commercial powerhouse, is now at the heart of a major military campaign by President Bashar Assad’s fighters and his steadfast ally Moscow.
As the situation for civilians grows increasingly dire, the largest hospital in east Aleppo was hit by two barrel bombs on Saturday, the medical organization that supports it said.
“Two barrel bombs hit the M10 hospital and there were reports of a cluster bomb as well,” said Adham Sahloul of the Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS).
Sahloul said a small group of patients and doctors “were inside the hospital for basic triage, bandaging, and cleaning services for emergency cases” when the bombardment began and remain trapped there. SAMS radiologist and hospital administrator Mohammad Abu Rajab made an urgent call for help on Saturday morning from inside M10.
“The hospital is being destroyed! SOS, everyone!” he said in an audio message distributed to journalists.
M10 had already been hit on Wednesday along with the second-largest hospital in the area, known as M2, in what UN chief Ban Ki-moon denounced as “war crimes.”
That bombardment heavily damaged the two facilities and left only six fully-functional hospitals in the city’s east, according to SAMS.
At the bombed hospital, an AFP journalist saw blood-stained hospital beds and dented equipment lying in disarray beneath blown-out windows, while medical staff in green scrubs picked through the rubble outside to assess the damage.
“A new barrel bomb fell this afternoon in front of the hospital, forcing medical staff... to evacuate all patients to another one and leave the hospital,” a doctor at M10 told AFP.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault denounced the strikes, saying that “the systematic targeting of structures and health workers is particularly unjustifiable.”

Source: Arab News