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The M10 hospital in the “rebel-held” east of the Syrian city of Aleppo has been hit in an air strike for the third time in a week, activists say. According to CNN, the attacks that occurred also pummeled the hospital in rebel-held eastern Aleppo, last Wednesday and Saturday.
At least seven people died and more remain trapped under rubble after “bunker-buster” bombs destroyed the M10 hospital, opposition activists from the Aleppo Media Center said. According to CNN, among those killed were two medical staff members and five maintenance workers who were trying to repair the hospital after the previous airstrikes, activists and hospital staff said.
Adham Sahloul of the Syrian American Medical Society, which supports the M10 hospital told BBC that one bunker-busting bomb had left a 10-meter-deep (33 feet) crater outside the front entrance, and many were fearing the rest of the building might collapse, he added.
“The hospital is now not usable at all. It is not salvageable,” he was quoted as saying by the AFP news agency.
UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Stephen O’Brien has warned that medical facilities are being destroyed “one-by-one” as eastern Aleppo is “pounded with bunker-busting bombs, barrel bombs, mortar rounds and artillery shells”.
According to BBC, patients are being turned away, no medicines are available to treat even the most common ailments, and the number of people requiring urgent medical evacuations is likely to rise dramatically with clean water and food in very short supply in Aleppo.
Ammar Abdullah, a photographer based in the suburbs of Aleppo, said the recent regime advances were very significant. “The takeover will further choke off the already under-supplied eastern Aleppo,” he said.
But Zakaria Malahfji of the Fastaqim Union rebel group in Aleppo said, “We are not thinking at all of leaving the city.”
“We chose the path of revolution, and we will not surrender,” he added. “In fact, there are residents that are starting to carry weapons and fight the regime. There is a state of people’s resistance now in Aleppo.”