Artillery shelling has killed eight civilians, including a child when it hit a surgical hospital in rebel-held northwest Syria, the International Rescue Committee (IRC) has said in a statement.
The attack on Sunday in the town of Atareb has also wounded 16 civilians including five health staff, the IRC said. The hospital is now out of service.“Four of the injured are in a critical condition,” IRC said, adding that the hospital is run by its partner organisation SAMS.
The attack on Sunday on Atareb in Aleppo’s countryside came despite a Russian-Turkish ceasefire since March 2020, supposedly to protect the wider rebel-held stronghold.
Turkey’s defence ministry and a war monitor earlier reported that Syrian government artillery fire hit the hospital’s main entrance inside a cave.
“Although SAMS shared the hospital’s coordinates through the UN’s notification system, it came under attack and has now been damaged so severely that it can no longer be used,” Rehana Zawar, the IRC’s country director for northwest Syria said in a statement.“This is the fifth attack on health care that has been recorded so far this year, and brings the total number of attacks on health care since January 2019 to 118.
“Health facilities are protected under international law and should be safe havens in times of crisis, but after 10 years of war this is not the case in Syria. Since the start of the conflict, Physicians for Human Rights have documented close to 600 attacks on health care,” Zawar said.
Al Jazeera’s Adham Abu Hussam, reporting from neighbouring rebel-held Idlib province, said that the hospital used to serve some 100,000 people in the area.
The area is also included in the de-escalation zone agreed upon by Russia, Iran and Turkey – an area which stretches from the northeastern mountains of Latakia to the northwestern suburbs of Aleppo city.The hospital is located underground, a tactic used by the opposition to avoid being targeted in the conflict-prone area.In a statement, the White Helmets – a volunteer search-and-rescue group that operates in rebel-held parts of Syria – said the attack is a “continuation of the regime and Russia’s systematic policy of targeting medical facilities and hospitals”.
