Missile hits hospital in north Syria, killing 10

The aid group said the hospital had 30 beds, 54 staff members, two operating theatres, an outpatients department and an emergency room.

But Syria’s ambassador to Moscow, Riad Haddad, said the hospital had been targeted by a U.S. raid. The opposition group, which tracks both sides of the conflict through sources on the ground, said dozens were wounded in the attack.

The U.N. suspended peace talks in Geneva earlier this month amid opposition fury as a government offensive backed by Russian airstrikes broke rebel lines north of Aleppo and sent tens of thousands of civilians fleeing. The ground offensive has been focused on the northern province of Aleppo while Monday’s airstrike struck the clinic in the nearby Idlib province.

Despite the shelling, the coalition of Kurdish and Arab fighters known as the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) was advancing inside the key rebel-held town of Tal Rifaat, the Observatory said.

MSF said those confirmed killed in the strikes were five patients, a caretaker and a guard.

Paramedics and volunteers were working on removing the rubble, he added. The four-story building once was a cement company but had served as a makeshift clinic during the war, said al-Sobeih.

And in Azaz, a major prize in the battles unfolding in Aleppo province, two hospitals were hit, at least one of them by what residents and the Turkish government said was a ballistic missile.

Intense clashes broke out Tuesday near the village of Kaljibrin as SDF fighters tried to reach it, according to the Observatory and Aleppo-based activist Bahaa al-Halaby.

Nearly 50 civilians were killed when missiles hit at least five medical facilities and two schools in rebel-held areas of Syria yesterday, according to the United Nations, which called the attacks a blatant violation of global law.At least 14 were killed in the northern town of Azaz, the last rebel stronghold before the border with Turkey, when missiles hit a children’s hospital and a school sheltering refugees, a medic and two residents said. He said some 10 people were killed and many were wounded.

Opposition official Abdulrahman Al-Hassan said the women’s hospital in Azaz was hit by two surface-to-surface missiles, blaming the attack on Russia because “photos of the missiles have Russian language (and) because we haven’t seen this kind (of missile) before the Russian intervention”.

Others showed a huge crater next to a building that purportedly housed the child and maternal hospital in Azaz.

“They hit the school, they hit the school”, wailed a Syrian woman who was unloaded from an ambulance onto a wheelchair.

But Moscow has said it is targeting terrorist groups and dismissed any suggestion it has killed civilians since beginning its air campaign in support of President Bashar al-Assad’s forces in September. The Observatory said five were killed.

European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini branded the Idlib attack “unacceptable” and urged “all parties (to respect) basic principles of humanitarian law”.

She said more fighting “is obviously not what we expect”.

Dutch Foreign Minister Bert Koenders, whose country holds the EU’s rotating presidency, said “we have the plan for a cessation of hostilities and I think everybody has to abide by that”.

Turkey said on Monday afternoon Kurdish forces had been expelled from around Azaz as a result of its shelling.

Physicians for Human Rights, an organization that has been tracking attacks on health care workers and infrastructure amid the Syrian conflict, says it has documented 336 attacks on medical sites that have killed 697 staff members, the vast majority carried out by the Syrian government and its allies.