Aleppo air strikes kill 15, hospital destroyed

Airstrikes on rebel-held districts of Syria’s contested city of Aleppo on Wednesday, including one that struck near a hospital, killed 15 civilians and wounded many others, as fighting in the country’s largest city intensified once again, opposition activists said.

The northern city has seen an uptick in violence in the last two days, with government forces pounding rebel-held eastern parts of the city with airstrikes while rebels are shelling western, government-held districts.

The activists said one of Wednesday’s strikes hit near the Bayan hospital in the rebel-held Shaar neighborhood, killing 10 people. Videos uploaded on the internet by activists show massive destruction, fires and thick black smoke billowing from buildings.

Wounded people are seen being loaded into ambulances. A body covered in thick gray dust is lying face down on a street littered with debris. The Independent Doctors Association, which describes itself as a cross-border Syrian humanitarian organization providing health care to the province and the city of Aleppo, said on its Twitter account that an airstrike hit a children’s hospital it runs, destroying one floor.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based opposition monitoring group, said 10 civilians were killed in Wednesday’s attack, including children. It said the airstrike hit a motorcycle repair shop in a square near the hospital. Five other civilians were killed in strikes that hit nearby districts, bringing the death toll to 15.