A number of major trauma hospitals in rebel-held eastern Aleppo are out of service after days of heavy airstrikes, the Syrian American Medical Society told CNN on Saturday.
However, activists working inside the city said up to five other hospitals in eastern neighborhoods are still functioning.
“For the first time, eastern Aleppo is out of hospitals operating at full capacity,” Dr Mazen Kewara, Director of the SAMS Turkey Office, told CNN. “There are remaining medical facilities but they are not operating at full capacity,” he said.
One of those hit was a children’s hospital, forcing staff to evacuate babies to safety.
Syrian government aircraft resumed airstrikes Tuesday in Aleppo after a relative lull of three weeks, with activists in the city reporting scores of deaths and injuries since then.
The Aleppo Media Center activist group and medical crews reported that 46 people were killed and 75 injured Friday in airstrikes and shelling in the city and surrounding countryside, with the activists describing the fighting as some of the bloodiest yet.
Patients, hospital staff injured
An AMC activist told CNN on Saturday that there are up to five hospitals now operating in Aleppo.
The AMC said there were minor injuries to patients and staff at the M1 surgical hospital after artillery shelling and airstrikes caused major fires on Friday.
At the second hospital the group visited, the al-Hakim children’s hospital, the AMC told CNN that the medical crew and children were evacuated with no injuries and that all babies survived the attacks.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told CNN on Saturday that some of the hospitals struck in airstrikes in recent days were out of service for a time but are now operating to some extent in the besieged parts of Aleppo.
The hospitals are desperately needed by an estimated 250,000 people trapped under bombardment in the eastern side of the city with dwindling reserves of food, fuel and medical supplies.
A UK-based monitoring group, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said Friday that more than 1,000 people have died in airstrikes and shelling across Aleppo and surrounding areas since a short-lived US and Russian-brokered ceasefire broke down on September 19.
Syria’s grinding five-year conflict has devastated the city, divided between government-controlled areas in the west and rebel positions in the east.
Moscow has sought to distance itself from the latest blitz, with Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov saying Wednesday that the Russian air force had not carried out the Aleppo strikes, according to state-run news agency Tass.
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