Airstrike destroys Syrian hospital amid fears of ‘catastrophic’ turn in fighting
An airstrike hit a hospital supported by the aid group Doctors Without Borders in the Syrian city. At least 14 patients and medical staffers are reported dead.

By Erin Cunningham-April 28 

ISTANBUL — An onslaught of airstrikes in rebel-held areas of the Syrian city of Aleppo has killed scores and destroyed a hospital supported by international aid groups, activists and humanitarian workers said Thursday, prompting the United Nations to warn of a “catastrophic deterioration” that could intensify an already dire humanitarian crisis.

A two-month-old cease-fire had brought a brief respite to areas of Syria racked by fighting. But in a 24-hour period between Wednesday and Thursday, at least 60 people — including children and doctors — were killed in rebel-controlled neighborhoods of Aleppo, Syria’s largest city and once the country’s commercial center.

Airstrikes Wednesday night collapsed a hospital supported by Doctors Without Borders and the International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC), killing patients and staff members, including one of the city’s last pediatricians, the two aid groups said. The strikes were the latest in a series of increasingly violent attacks that have violated the truce, raising fears of a complete breakdown of efforts to end the years-long conflict.

“I cannot express how high the stakes are for the next hours and days,” the chairman of the United Nations’ humanitarian task force on Syria, Jan Egeland, told reporters in Geneva.

Egeland said Aleppo, which Syrian officials have said will be the target of an upcoming offensive, had suffered “a catastrophic deterioration” in the previous 24 to 48 hours.

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