Bombarded, All Aleppo Hospital Out of Service

ALEPPO - All hospitals in Syria’s besieged opposition-held eastern Aleppo are out of service after days of heavy airstrikes, its health directorate and the World Health Organisation (WHO) said yesterday.

But a war monitor said some were still managing to operate to some degree.

“This destruction of infrastructure essential to life leaves the besieged, resolute people, including all children and elderly men and women, without any health facilities offering life-saving treatment…leaving them to die,” Reuters cited Aleppo’s health directorate as stating.

Elizabeth Hoff, the WHO representative in Syria, said a UN-led group of aid agencies based over the border in Turkey “confirmed today that all hospitals in eastern Aleppo are out of service.”

However, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a UK-based war monitor, said that some hospitals were still operating in the besieged parts of Aleppo but that many residents were frightened to use them because of heavy shelling.

Medical sources, residents and opposition groups in eastern Aleppo say hospitals have been damaged by unrelenting airstrikes and Assad regime barrel bombs in recent days, including direct hits on the buildings.

Health and rescue workers have previously been able to bring damaged hospitals back into operation but a lack of supplies is making that harder.

Intense airstrikes have battered eastern Aleppo since Tuesday when the Syrian army and its allies resumed operations after a pause lasting weeks. They launched ground attacks against opposition positions yesterday.

Syrian state television said on Tuesday the air force had targeted “terrorist strongholds and supply depots” in Aleppo, using terms it uses to describe all opposition factions regardless of their involvement in terrorism.

Russia has said its air force is only conducting air strikes in other parts of Syria. The Damascus regime describes all the rebels fighting it as terrorists.

Both countries have denied deliberately targeting hospitals and other civilian infrastructure during the war, which began in 2011 and was joined by Russia’s air force in September 2015.

Meanwhile, US National Security Advisor Susan Rice condemned "heinous" bombings of hospitals in rebel-held eastern Aleppo Saturday, warning the regime and its Russian backers they are responsible for immediate and long-term consequences.

"The United States condemns in the strongest terms these horrific attacks against medical infrastructure and humanitarian aid workers. There is no excuse for these heinous actions," Rice said in a statement.

"The Syrian regime and its allies, Russia in particular, bears responsibility for the immediate and long term consequences these actions have caused in Syria and beyond."

Her comments come as intense government air strikes and artillery fire killed at least 27 people in Aleppo, where hospitals have been destroyed and schools have been forced to close.

An AFP correspondent on the ground described relentless bombardment with air strikes, mortar rounds and barrel bombs slamming into residential neighborhoods in the east of the battered second city.

Rice indicated that the US government would use a summit of Asia-Pacific leaders in Peru to put pressure on Russia. President Vladimir Putin is attending the event.

"The United States again joins our partners, many of them gathering in Peru this weekend, in demanding the immediate cessation of these bombardments and calling on Russia to immediately deescalate violence and facilitate humanitarian aid and access for the Syrian people," said Rice.