4 hospitals hit by air raids in Aleppo, doctors say

Four makeshift hospitals and a local blood bank in Syria’s battered Aleppo city were hit by air raids in the past 24 hours, a group of doctors say.

The bombardment killed a two-day-old baby in the children’s hospital in a besieged eastern neighborhood of Aleppo, says the Independent Doctor’s Association, a group of Syrian doctors that supports clinics in the city.

The infant’s oxygen supply was cut after a strike on the hospital at 1:00 am (2300 GMT), the second strike on the hospital in about nine hours, according to the IDA.

“The doctors could only yell for their colleagues to take cover and shield the babies,” the group says in a statement.

The IDA says the four hospitals that were hit — the children’s hospital, Al-Bayan, Al-Zahraa, and Al-Daqaq — will all be going out of service “as a result of the escalating series of aerial attacks taking place against health facilities in Aleppo by Syrian and Russian warplanes.”

The World Health Organization says Syria is the most dangerous place for health care workers to operate last year, with 135 attacks on health facilities and workers in 2015.

— AFP