Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) yesterday appealed to the Syrian government and its Russian ally to stop bombing rebel-held eastern Aleppo, warning they were provoking a “bloodbath” among civilians in the city.
“Bombs are raining from Syria-led coalition planes and the whole of east Aleppo has become a giant kill box,” MSF director of operations Xisco Villalonga said in a statement.
“The Syrian government must stop the indiscriminate bombing, and Russia as an indispensable political and military ally of Syria has the responsibility to exert the pressure to stop this,” he said.
Photo: Reuters
The UN has warned that a humanitarian catastrophe is unfolding in Aleppo unlike any witnessed so far in Syria’s brutal five-year war, which has claimed more than 300,000 lives.
According to the UN, only about 35 doctors remain in eastern Aleppo, where an estimated 250,000 people have been under siege by government forces since early last month.
The MSF statement cited numbers from the east Aleppo health directorate, showing that from Sept. 1 to 26, the few hospitals still functioning in the rebel-held part of the city received some 278 dead bodies, including at least 96 children.
More than 822 wounded were also taken in, including at least 221 children, the group said.
“All intensive care units are full. Patients have to wait for others to die so they can be moved to an available bed in intensive care,” Abu Waseem, manager of an MSF-supported trauma hospital in east Aleppo, said in the statement.
“We only have three operating theaters and yesterday alone we had to do more than 20 major abdominal surgeries,” he said, adding that “hospital staff is working up to 20 hours a day. They cannot just go home and let people die.”
MSF said it had last been able to deliver medical supplies to east Aleppo in August, and warned that the huge number of wounded was rapidly depleting the stocks in the remaining hospitals.
“Now, with a complete siege on the city, attacks on humanitarian convoys and intensive bombing, we are powerless,” Villalonga said, adding that “if this intensity of bombing continues, there may not be a single hospital standing in a few days.”
He demanded that the bombing stop, and that the sick and wounded be evacuated from the city.
“Anything short of this is confirmation of what many are dreading, that the world has abandoned the people of Aleppo to a violent, agonizing death,” he said.
In related news, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights yesterday said that more than 3,800 civilians have been killed in one year of Russian airstrikes in Syria in support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
More than 9,300 people have been killed in the Russian raids since Sept. 30 last year, the monitoring group said.
The toll includes more than 2,700 militants from the Islamic State group and about 2,800 fighters from various rebel factions, the British-based group said.
At least 20,000 civilians have been wounded in the Russian raids, it said.
The Observatory — which relies on a network of sources inside Syria for its information — says it determines what planes carried out raids according to their type, location, flight patterns and the munitions involved.
Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman said the death toll from Russian strikes could be even higher given the number of people killed by unidentified warplanes.
Moscow on Thursday said that it would press on with its bombing campaign in Syria, ignoring a threat by Washington to suspend its engagement over the conflict following escalating attacks on rebel-held parts of Aleppo.
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