RUSSIA was last night accused of war crimes after “deliberate” air strikes on medical facilities in Syria.
The UN said up to 50 people were killed in the wave of attacks on hospitals and schools, which they condemned as “a blatant violation of international laws”.
Seven people died and another eight were missing, presumed dead, after a bomb hit a facility run by international charity Medecins Sans Frontiers (MSF) in Idlib province yesterday.
Another centre specialising in maternal and children’s care was struck in Azaz, near the Turkish border. Ten people died and about 30 were injured, and footage from the site showed the damage to one room where infants lay in incubators.
Meanwhile, seven people are said to have died when a school for disabled children at Kaljebrin, near Azaz, was hit, with a missile similar to a Russian surface-to-air weapon found nearby.
Last night no-one had claimed responsibility for the attacks, with reports the school may have been targeted by the Syrian government forces of Bashar Al-Assad and the hospital strikes carried out by Russians.
However, leading charities condemned both Damascus and Moscow, with Amnesty International hitting out against “scores of apparently deliberate attacks on hospitals, clinics and medical personnel being committed in flagrant violation of international humanitarian law”.
Said Boumedouha, Amnesty’s deputy Middle East and North Africa programme director, said: “Russian and Syrian forces know full well that deliberate attacks on medical facilities are war crimes.
“All parties to the conflict must cease such horrific attacks, stop destroying medical facilities and allow medical workers to carry out their life-saving work without fear of being killed or injured in the line of duty.”
MSF said its facility was struck by four missiles within minutes amid Russian airstrikes in the area.
Those killed included five patients, a caretaker and a hospital guard. Eight members of staff were last night still unaccounted for, and the number of missing patients was unknown.
MSF France president Mego Terzian claimed “either the [Syrian] government or Russia” was “clearly” responsible and Massimiliano Rebaudengo, MSF’s head of mission, said: “The destruction on the MSF supported facility appears to be a deliberate attack on a health structure.
“The destruction of the hospital leaves the local population of around 40,000 people without access to medical services in an active zone of conflict.”
Aid group Physicians for Human Rights says it has proof of more than 300 attacks on medical facilities in the country between March 2011 and August last year, with almost 700 medical personnel killed. It claims more than 90 per cent of these attacks were carried out by Assad’s forces.
The 30-bed hospital in Ma’arat Al Numan had 54 staff, two operating theatres, an outpatient department and an emergency room. The outpatient department treated about 1,500 people a month and the ER carried out an average of 1,100 consultations during that period, with about 140 operations carried out.
MSF has been supporting this hospital since September 2015 and covered all the needs of the facility including provision of medical supplies and running costs.
The charity supported its reconstruction as recently as December after three previous attacks forced it to move from its previous location.
The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also attributed the attack to Russian warplanes, despite weekend denials by Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev that his country was targeting civilians and civilian facilities.
The incidents also come days after Assad pledged to take all of Syria back ahead of a “cessation of hostilities” in the country.
He said he would continue fighting “terrorists” during the period, and Russia also said its air strikes would be unaffected.
On Sunday, Syrian opposition leader and former prime minister Riad Hijab called for the bombing to stop.
He said: “Every day hundreds of Syrians die from air strikes and artillery bombardment, poison gas, cluster bombs, torture, starvation, cold and drowning.
“The Syrian people continue to live in terror and in utter despair after the international community failed to prevent even the gravest violations committed against them.”
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