10 dead in airstrikes on rebel-held parts of Aleppo, say activists

The northern city, Syria’s largest, has seen an increase in violence in the last two days, with government forces pounding rebel-held eastern parts with airstrikes while rebels shell western, government-held areas.

The activists said one of the strikes on Wednesday hit near the Bayan hospital in the Shaar neighbourhood. Amateur videos uploaded on the internet by activists show massive destruction, fires and thick black smoke billowing from buildings.

Wounded people are seen being loaded into ambulances. A body covered in thick grey dust lies face down on a street littered with debris.

The Independent Doctors Association, which describes itself as a cross-border Syrian humanitarian organisation providing healthcare to the province and the city of Aleppo, said on its Twitter account that an airstrike had hit a children’s hospital it runs, destroying one floor.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based opposition monitoring group, said at least 10 people were killed in Wednesday’s attacks, including children.

It was not immediately clear if they were all victims of the strike that hit near the hospital. The Local Coordination Committees, which also closely follows the conflict in Syria, also reported the airstrikes, saying they resulted in multiple casualties.

Hospitals and medical facilities have become a regular target in Syria’s civil war, now in its sixth year. Since the start of the conflict in 2011, nearly 740 doctors and staff have been killed in more than 360 attacks on hospitals in Syria, according to Physicians for Human Rights.

Aleppo, once Syria’s thriving commercial centre, has been carved up between government- and rebel-controlled districts since the summer of 2012. The city has been at the centre of a vicious war of attrition between government and opposition forces since then.