The attack, scenes of which have been airing all day across the Arab world, comes after a week of relentless bombardment by the Assad regime, during which Aleppo’s battered medical facilities have been forced out of service or underground.
In a devastating video broadcast by Al Jazeera Saturday, two nurses in an Aleppo children’s hospital break down in tears as they rescue emaciated newborns from a neonatal intensive care unit. Moments earlier, the room had filled with dust from a massive explosion, also heard on camera.
The attack, scenes of which have been airing all day across the Arab world, comes after a week of relentless bombardment by the Assad regime, during which Aleppo’s battered medical facilities have been forced out of service or underground, with civilians reportedly too afraid to seek treatment.
The video leaves no doubt why. In it, patients and their families are seen stumbling through dark halls, seeking shelter in case of another attack. The reporter, Amro Halabi, whose frontline reports have made him a household name in the Arab world, can be heard trailing behind, asking between hurried breaths if the people around him are safe.
Warning: Graphic footage.
Toward the end of the footage, Halabi returns to his original story, about a family admitted to the hospital for inhaling “poisonous chlorine gas,” presumably dropped by the regime.
Al Jazeera cites World Health Organization statistics that show 126 attacks on health facilities during Syria’s five-year war.
Aleppo, home to some 2.3 million people, is roughly half the size of the Gaza Strip. During Israel’s 2014 attack on Gaza, dubbed Operation Protective Edge, hundreds of Palestinian families sought shelter in the enclave’s largest hospital.
Israel did not attack the facility, though it did target another hospital in the eastern Gaza Strip.