Air raids hit four hospitals in Syria’s Aleppo

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BEIRUT: Air raids have hit four makeshift hospitals in Syria’s battered Aleppo city, doctors said Sunday, jeopardising medical care for more than 200,000 desperate civilians in rebel-held areas.

The bombardment since Saturday has worsened the plight of residents of besieged eastern neighbourhoods of Syria’s second city, where food and medical supplies are becoming increasingly scarce.

The hospitals, as well as a blood bank that was hit, are in the Al-Shaar neighbourhood, said the Independent Doctor’s Association, a group that supports clinics in Aleppo.

It said a two-day-old baby was killed in the children’s hospital when his oxygen supply was cut in a raid early on Sunday.

It was the second strike on the same hospital in about nine hours, the IDA said.

“After the second strike, we had to move him (the baby) downstairs to the bomb shelter, and that’s why he died,” said Malika, the hospital’s head nurse.

“The hospital is severely damaged and it’s not the first time,” she said, in online conversations with IDA representatives seen by AFP.