BEIRUT (AP) - An airstrike on a medical facility in northern Syria has killed at least five staff members, the medical relief organization that runs the facility said Wednesday. The mobile medical team was hit while responding to an earlier air strike targeting militants from the al Qaeda-linked Fatah al-Sham Front, Dr Oubaida Al Moufti, vice-president of the International Union of Medical Care and Relief Organisations said. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group puts the toll at 13 dead, among them four nurses and paramedics and nine rebel fighters, some of them belonging to the al-Qaida-linked Fatah al-Sham Front. The strike hit a medical triage point, and killed two ambulance drivers and two nurses who had arrived to transport wounded patients to a more advanced medical facility, UOSSM said in a statement (in French). It said two of its ambulances, which are run by UOSSM and the World Health Organization, were destroyed and the three-story building collapsed. “This is a deplorable act against health care workers and medical facilities,” said Dr. Khaula Sawah, the head of UOSSM USA. Russia has strongly denied involvement of its own or Syrian planes, and said the incident was caused by fire on the ground and not by an air strike. The medical facility attack follows a Monday night airstrike on a Syrian Arab Red Crescent aid convoy that prompted international condemnation and recrimination over attacks targeting humanitarian facilities and workers. Image copyright EPA Image caption The convoy had been unloading aid at a warehouse when it was attacked

Blame game

Speaking about Monday's attack on the aid convoy, unnamed US officials said the strike was too sophisticated to have been carried out by the Syrian army. The incident exposed rising tensions between the two architects of Syria's cease-fire deal, Russia and the U.S. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon described the convoy strike as a “sickening, savage and apparently deliberate attack.” The convoy was carrying aid materials from the UN

The incident exposed rising tensions between the two architects of Syria's cease-fire deal, Russia and the US The US said it believed Russian or Syrian government jets were behind the attack that killed 20 civilians, and that either way it held Russia responsible because under the truce deal Moscow was charged with preventing airstrikes on humanitarian deliveries. Syria’s rebels do not operate an air force. In New York on Tuesday, Russian and U.S. diplomats insisted that the Syrian cease-fire, which went into effect nine days ago, was not dead, despite indications of soaring violence. The Syrian military declared Monday night the truce had expired, shortly before presumed Russian or Syrian government jets launched a sustained aerial attack on Aleppo’s opposition-held neighbourhoods. The cease-fire was intended in part to allow humanitarian convoys to reach besieged and hard-to-reach areas throughout Syria. Yet following the convoy attack, the U.N. suspended overland aid operations to hard-to-reach areas in Syria. Syrians living in opposition areas will be disproportionately affected because the U.N.’s major warehouses are located in government-held areas. The U.N. estimates 6 million Syrians live in besieged and hard-to-reach areas.
An airstrike yesterday on a medical facility near Aleppo kills five French medical charity workers.