Humanitarian fiasco: Missile strikes on Syria schools, hospitals kill 50

Ban Ki-moon condemns attacks as ‘blatant violations of international law’

WASHINGTON:

The United Nations said on Monday that air strikes on at least five medical facilities and two schools in northern Syria's Aleppo and Idlib have killed close to 50 civilians including children.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon considers that "such attacks are blatant violations of international law," added UN deputy spokesman Farhan Haq.

Early reports from residents claimed that at least five missiles hit one hospital in the town centre and a nearby school, where refugees fleeing a major Syrian army offensive were sheltering.

A resident said another refugee shelter south of the town was also hit by bombs dropped by jets believed to be Russian.

"These appear to be deliberate attacks on health structures, and we condemn this attack in the strongest possible terms," said Massimiliano Rebaudengo, the head of MSF's Syria mission.

"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," Rebaudengo said. The organisation supports around 150 hospitals in Syria.

Tens of thousands of people have fled to the town, the last rebel stronghold before the border with Turkey, from towns and villages where there is heavy fighting between the Syrian army and militias.

"We have been moving scores of screaming children from the hospitals," said medic Juma Rahal.

French charity Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said in a statement that at least eight staff were missing after four rockets hit a hospital that it supported in the province of Idlib in north western Syria.

The United States condemned the air strikes that hit two civilian hospitals in and around northern Syria's Aleppo, identifying them as one run by Medecins Sans Frontieres and the Women's and Children's Hospital in the city of Aziz.

"That the Assad regime and its supporters would continue these attacks, without cause and without sufficient regard for international obligations to safeguard innocent lives, flies in the face of the unanimous calls by the ISSG, including in Munich, to avoid attacks on civilians and casts doubt on Russia's willingness and/or ability to help bring to a stop the continued brutality of the Assad regime against its own people," the State Department said. 

Published in The Express Tribune, February 16^th, 2016.