Govt attack on hospital in Syria’s Idlib kills 5 innocent civilians

Syria: Turkey’s defence ministry and a war monitor declared that five civilians, including a child, have been killed by Syrian government artillery fire, which hit a hospital entrance in Syria’s last major rebel bastion of Idlib.

On Sunday, the attack on the northwestern town of Atareb came despite a Russian-Turkish ceasefire since March 2020, expected to safeguard the wider rebel-held stronghold.

The hospital is situated underground, a tactic utilised by the opposition to avoid targeting in the conflict-prone region.

The explosion of Syrian government artillery killed at least five civilians, including a child and a woman. It wounded medical staff, according to the Syrian Civil Defense enlistees, known as the White Helmets. 

T.R. National Defense Department tweeted, “The Assad regime once again attacked innocent Syrian civilians. 5 innocent civilians, including 1 child, were murdered by cannonballs at a hospital in Idlib Atarib. The regime, which again committed a crime against humanity by shooting the hospital, injured 10 civilians.”

A video posted on the local health directorate’s Facebook page revealed debris and bloodstains at the hospital’s arrival.

Fadi Hakim, a spokesperson for the Syrian American Medical Society, which helps the hospital, stated the structural damage entails the destruction of the orthopaedic clinic and the emergency ward.

Another Twitter user stated, “One should think about why a country’s government hits its sick household. Do not let the terrorist members we protect have used them as bases, and When we say we destroy terrorists, civilians are affected; they are always innocent who are harmed. I guess this is the only valid reason.”

Attacks on hospitals are usual in the Syria ambivalence and are mostly accused of the government and allied troops. The health directorate in the rebel-controlled northwest declared the attack that happened on Sunday was the first on a medical facility in the area since February 2020.

Physicians for Human Rights, basically U.S.-based, has documented 598 attacks on at least 350 separate health-care facilities in Syria since March 2011, the vast most of them allegedly committed by the Syrian regime and allied forces, including Russia. In the same 10-year decade, at least 930 medical personnel were murdered, the rights group revealed.

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