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Three medical facilities were hit in the space of three hours, the UN says. One of the hospitals targeted is one of the few that still provide paediatric services. Medics have had to take babies out of incubators, the UN says. Another strike hit near the Bayan hospital in the eastern Shaar district, activists and a monitoring group said. Video footage, purportedly of the aftermath, showed bodies being pulled from burning and destroyed buildings. It was not clear who was responsible, but government forces are trying to regain control of the divided city.
In a statement, Unicef's Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa Peter Salama said that the three medical facilities attacked were the al-Bayan and al-Hakim hospitals, and the Abdulhadi Fares clinic. All are in the eastern part of the city. "The Al Hakim hospital is one of the few that still provide paediatric services." Dr Salama said. "This is the second attack on the hospital." The UN says health personnel have also been either killed or injured. "Hundreds of medical facilities that provide critical life-saving health care for thousands have been damaged or destroyed. In the past two weeks alone, six health facilities were attacked across the country,." Dr Salama said.
Nurses from al-Hakim were seen on Wednesday running to the hospital's basement carrying babies, the hospital's director of staff was quoted by the AP news agency as saying. Only a handful of hospitals are still functional in the city's rebel-held quarters, serving 350,000 residents, medics say. In a defiant speech on Tuesday, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad promised to retake "every inch" of the country from his opponents. The speech to Syria's newly-elected parliament was Mr Assad's first major address since UN-brokered indirect peace talks in Geneva broke down in April.
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If sustained, the advance in Ramousah would reverse nearly all gains rebels made in a push last month, tighten a blockade over rebel-held eastern Aleppo and ease access for the army into government-held western districts through the city's south. A second line of attack, aimed at villages south of Aleppo and supported by what a pro-government fighter called "dusk to dawn" bombardment, is intended to isolate Telat al-Eis, a hill captured by rebels in May that commands fire over the region. However, a rebel source said insurgents still held part of Ramousah and that though the army was mobilizing forces, the Jaish al-Fatah coalition of Islamist groups was still present at the southern Aleppo front.
Civil Defence members look for survivors in a damaged site after what activists said was a barrel bomb dropped by forces loyal to Syria's president Bashar Al-Assad in Al-Shaar nighbourhood of Aleppo
The battle for Aleppo has become the focus both for President Bashar al-Assad, backed by Shi'ite militias from Iraq and Lebanon, Iran's Revolutionary Guards, and Russian air power, and for the Sunni rebels seeking to overthrow him. In early August the rebel advance into southern Aleppo gave them control over the residential district of Ramousah, a complex of military colleges immediately to its west and the 1070 Apartment Blocks district west of that. It opened a corridor into the rebel-held parts of Aleppo that are home to at least 250,000 people and had been under siege for weeks, while forcing the government to access its own areas in the city by a longer, more precarious route.
Men rescue a boy from under the rubble after what activists said was explosive barrels dropped by forces loyal to Syria's President Bashar Al-Assad in Al-Shaar neighborhood of Aleppo
As international concern has mounted, the United Nations has renewed a call for weekly 48-hour humanitarian ceasefires to allow aid into the city, but efforts by Russia and the United States to agree terms for a truce are dragging. On Thursday Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry discussed by phone potential cooperation to facilitate aid deliveries. Syria's five-year war has killed hundreds of thousands and displaced 11 million, half of Syria's pre-war population, while drawing in world and regional powers, inspiring jihadist attacks across the world and sparking an international refugee crisis.
BIG REINFORCEMENTS
Terrorist cheerleaders post happy smileys when terrorists begin an offensive and post horrified smileys when thy fail, calling it "suffering and sorrow".Suffering and sorrow in Aleppo...
At least 300,000 Syrians have died in the half-decade Syrian civil war, Hussein said, adding that he and his human rights staff have "documented violations of international humanitarian law by all parties in Aleppo," which includes Russia, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime and anti-Assad rebels. The Islamic State has not played a major role in Aleppo but has carried out attacks. "The ancient city of Aleppo, a place of millennial civility and beauty, is today a slaughterhouse -- a gruesome locus of pain and fear, where the lifeless bodies of small children are trapped under streets of rubble and pregnant women deliberately bombed," Hussein wrote in a statement. "The collective failure of the international community to protect civilians and halt this bloodshed should haunt every one of us. Not only does it violate every norm of human rights, to our dishonor; its costs will be borne by our children, and future generations."
Russia this week began holding "humanitarian pauses" between airstrikes to allow civilians and rebels to flee Aleppo's eastern sector, which has been a rebel stronghold targeted by Assad's regime and Russia. Hussein, a Jordanian prince, said the airstrikes last month in Aleppo that destroyed about 18 humanitarian aid trucks, killing at least 20 people, "took these pervasive violations of international law to a new low of barbarity." Hussein called for an immediate cease-fire in Syria to allow for humanitarian relief and urged for U.N. Security Council action as the "responsibility for halting the Syrian crisis rests primarily" on the U.N. principal organ.
"Armed opposition groups continue to fire mortars and other projectiles into civilian neighborhoods of western Aleppo, but indiscriminate airstrikes across the eastern part of the city by government forces and their allies are responsible for the overwhelming majority of civilian casualties," Hussein added. "These violations constitute war crimes. And if knowingly committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against civilians, they constitute crimes against humanity."
U.N.: Aleppo a 'slaughterhouse' where Russian, Syrian airstrikes are 'historic' war crimes
