iStock/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) — Two of the largest hospitals in the besieged part of eastern Aleppo have been attacked and are now out of service, as the number of wounded civilians continues to grow.
“The place is filled with dust,” Abu Rajab, a radiologist and managing director of one of the destroyed hospitals, told ABC News. “Warplanes targeted the hospital directly. This attack led to the hospital going out of service. Because of the siege we can’t fix the broken equipment. We are unable to service the people who need it. Today, we are sad. We are sad because we can’t provide the necessary treatment to the patients who need it. We are hoping to go back in service even if at a minimum level.”
Early this morning, 2 SAMS-supported hospitals in eastern #Aleppo were hit by targeted airstrikes and shelling. 2 casualties & 5 injured. pic.twitter.com/qB4a89PyRf
— SAMS (@sams_usa) September 28, 2016
The attack happened at around 4 a.m. local time, Abu Rajab said. Power generators, water reservoirs, respirators and other equipment were destroyed. The intensive care unit was also hit and damaged. Dust and rubble fell on the patients in their beds.
#Aleppo #Syria: It has come to the point where it’s actually more dangerous to be in a hospital than outside in the streets. @RMardiniICRC
— Yves Daccord (@YDaccordICRC) September 28, 2016
The wounded were sent to the few functioning hospitals in east Aleppo.
“We are very busy because all the patients from the two hospitals were transferred to the remaining hospitals,” Hamza Khatib, a doctor at an east Aleppo hospital who uses a pseudonym for safety reasons, told ABC News.
The World Health Organization and the Red Cross have called for humanitarian routes to be established in the besieged part of Aleppo so that dozens of sick and injured people can be evacuated. Only some 30 doctors are believed to remain in the besieged eastern part of Aleppo. Airstrikes on Aleppo intensified after the Syrian military declared an offensive against eastern Aleppo on Sept. 22 – a few days after announcing that a U.S.-Russia-brokered ceasefire had ended.
“These attacks strike at the very heart of what’s left of Aleppo’s health care system,” Donna McKay, executive director of Physicians for Human Rights, a non-profit group, said of today’s hospital attacks. “And now, with heavier artillery and a sustained campaign against medical facilities since the end of the ceasefire, we’re seeing the noose tighten around Aleppo. Intentional attacks on hospitals are war crimes, plain and simple, and the silence from the international community is deafening. The Syrian government and its Russian allies are engaged in an all-out assault on civilians and health care, and until these attacks end, the ongoing suffering and carnage will be a stain on all the world’s conscience.”
The hospital attacks happened as the number of killed and wounded in parts of Aleppo increases every day. Six civilians were killed in Aleppo’s al-Maadi neighbourhood today, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Airstrikes struck a number of other neighborhoods, leaving several civilians wounded.
Yesterday, at least 23 people, including 10 children, were killed after airstrikes hit east Aleppo’s neighborhoods of al-Shaar and al-Mashhad. One girl was rescued alive from under the rubble of a destroyed building. Activists said she lost 16 members of her family in the attack.
Since Friday, at least 96 children have been killed in eastern Aleppo and 223 have been injured, according to UNICEF.
“The children of Aleppo are trapped in a living nightmare,” said UNICEF Deputy Executive Director Justin Forsyth in a statement. “There are no words left to describe the suffering they are experiencing.”
Around 1,000 people have been killed in the past eight days alone after 1,700 airstrikes pounded the besieged part of Aleppo, according to the White Helmets, a group of unarmed, nonpartisan rescue workers in Syria.
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