A hospital in north-west Syria run by Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) has been destroyed in an air strike.
The medical charity said eight members of staff were missing after the attack in Maarat al-Numan, but it did not identify who was responsible.
One monitoring group reported that at least nine people were killed and that Russian aircraft had targeted the town.
The strike comes days after Russia and other world powers agreed to a limited cessation of hostilities in Syria.
More than 250,000 people have died in almost five years of war in Syria.
Eleven million others have fled their homes as forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad and those opposed to his rule battle each other, as well as jihadist militants from so-called Islamic State (IS).
’Deliberate attack’
MSF said four rockets hit the hospital in Maarat al-Numan, a rebel-held town about 30km (20 miles) south of the city of Idlib, within minutes of each other on Monday morning.
Eight members of staff at the hospital were currently
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based group which relies on a network of sources on the ground, said nine people were killed, including a child. The raid also left dozens of others wounded, it added.
“This appears to be a deliberate attack on a health structure, and we condemn this attack in the strongest possible terms,” said Massimiliano Rebaudengo, MSF’s head of mission in Syria.
“The destruction of the hospital leaves the local population of around 40,000 people without access to medical services in an active zone of conflict.”
The 30-bed hospital, which MSF had been supporting since September 2015, had 54 staff, two operating theatres, an outpatients department an emergency room.
On 5 February, three people were killed and six wounded when an MSF-supported hospital in the southern province of Deraa was hit in an air strike.
MSF, which operates medical facilities inside Syria and supports directly more than 150 others, said last week that such incidents were further depleting Syria’s already exhausted healthcare system and preventing more people from accessing desperately needed medical care.
Since the start of this year alone, 14 health facilities in Syria have been hit, which MSF said confirmed that hospitals and clinics were no longer places where patients could recover in safety.
MSF also reiterated that the repeated attacks on medical facilities in the ongoing conflict constituted a flagrant violation of international laws.
Source: BBC, 15 FEB 2016
