Barrel bombs hit largest hospital in rebel-held Alepp

At least two barrel bombs hit the largest hospital in the rebel-held side of Syria’s Aleppo city on Saturday, the medical organisation that supports it said.

The facility, known as M10, had already been hit by heavy bombardment on Wednesday along with the second-largest hospital in the area in what UN chief Ban Ki-moon denounced as “war crimes.”

“Two barrel bombs hit the M10 hospital and there were reports of a cluster bomb as well,” Adham Sahloul of the Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS) said of Saturday’s attack.

Wednesday’s bombardment heavily damaged the two facilities and left only six fully-functional hospitals in the city’s east, according to SAMS.

Saturday’s strikes were denounced by French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault.

“I condemn in the strongest terms the bombing that struck the M10 hospital this morning, one of the main hospitals of Aleppo,” Ayrault said in an emailed statement.

“This new attack only confirms the absolute urgency of a cessation of hostilities in Aleppo and access for civilian populations to the humanitarian assistance they desperately need,” he said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based monitoring group, confirmed that the M10 hospital was hit on Saturday.

Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said one person was killed, but could not immediately confirm if the victim was a patient at the facility or a member of staff.

The recent bombardment of Aleppo has been some of the worst in Syria’s five-year civil war, leaving more than 220 people dead and turning residential buildings into heaps of rubble.

The World Health Organization has called Syria the most dangerous place in the world for health workers.