A renewed blitz on Syria’s war-ravaged eastern Aleppo has killed almost 300 people, including children, in five days and obliterated desperately needed hospitals, rescuers and medical organizations say.
The Syrian Civil Defense, a volunteer rescue group also also known as the White Helmets, said that at least 289 people were killed between Tuesday and Saturday this week as the Syrian regime resumed airstrikes on the war-ravaged area after a three-week lull.
The death toll is likely to climb as the White Helmets said another 950 people were injured, while dozens remained missing in what they described as “nonstop attacks.”
On Saturday, the Syrian American Medical Society told CNN that not a single hospital in eastern Aleppo was operating at full capacity.
“For the first time, eastern Aleppo is out of hospitals operating at full capacity,” said Dr. Mazen Kewara, director of the medical society’s Turkey office.
Several major trauma hospitals were knocked out of service during recent attacks, the organization said.
However, activists working in the city said as many as five other hospitals in eastern neighborhoods were still somewhat functional.
‘Stop bombing hospitals’
Doctors Without Borders (MSF) emergency coordinator Teresa Sancristoval said that Saturday’s bombardment of hospitals marked “a dark day for east Aleppo.”
“The attacks have destroyed entire hospitals, electric generators, emergency rooms and wards, forcing them to stop all medical activities. It is not only MSF that condemns indiscriminate attacks on civilians or civilian infrastructure, including hospitals, but also humanitarian law. The message is simple and I don’t know how to say it any louder: stop bombing hospitals,” Teresa Sancristoval said.
One of those hit was a children’s hospital, forcing staff to evacuate babies to safety. MSF said that three floors were destroyed in the facility, the only hospital exclusively for children in the area.
“What is not clear is how much longer the health system, already on its knees, can carry on functioning unless the bombing stops and medical supplies are allowed in,” said Luis Montial, MSF deputy head of mission for Syria.
Saturday saw intense bombardment, with 61 people killed in more than 400 airstrikes from warplanes and helicopters, and more than 1,300 artillery shells, the White Helmets said. The activist Aleppo Media Center group put the death toll higher, reporting at least 68 people were killed Saturday.
CNN has not been able to independently verify the extent of the strikes with little access to eastern Aleppo.
It is unclear how many children have died in the attacks, but at least four were reported dead in strikes on Wednesday.
Desperate cry for help
Hospitals are desperately needed as an estimated 250,000 people remain trapped while the Syrian regime bombards the city’s rebel-held east, which faces dwindling reserves of food, fuel and medical supplies.
Powerful video footage that the activist group Aleppo Media Center posted online showed what it said was the immediate aftermath of a bombing at eastern Aleppo’s M2 hospital on Friday evening.
A man covered with dust and blood is carried past a body toward a stairwell filled with rubble and splintered wood. Another bandaged, dust-covered patient follows holding what looks like his own IV drip. Patients confined to bed are given face masks to cope with the dust.
A man who appears to be a doctor said: “The material damage is so huge in the hospital, unbelievable horror among patients and the medical staff, the ambulances outside can’t rescue patients, people can’t rescue each other, people are afraid of coming to the hospitals,” he said.
In Washington, national security adviser Susan Rice said in a statement: “The United States condemns in the strongest terms these horrific attacks against medical infrastructure and humanitarian aid workers. There is no excuse for these heinous actions.”
Neighborhoods bombed
In regime-held western Aleppo, two people were killed and seven were injured on Saturday when two neighborhoods were bombed by “terrorist groups,” according to the Syrian state news agency SANA. On Friday, five people were killed in the shelling, including two children, the state agency said.
Syria’s grinding five-year conflict has devastated Aleppo, divided between government-controlled areas in the west and rebel positions in the east.