Syria regime knocks out all hospitals in east 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.