Human Rights Voices

While the UN devotes its human rights operations to the demonization of the democratic state of Israel above all others and condemns the United States more often than the vast majority of non-democracies around the world, the voices of real victims around the world must be heard.

Syrian Arab Republic, August 2, 2016

Syrian Regime Bombs Hospital Amid Aleppo Battle

Original source

The Times of Israel

Syria's war-torn city of Aleppo has been ravaged by intense fighting in recent days as rebels seek to ease a government siege and cut off the regime's access route into the rest of the northern province.

Footage has emerged of the bombing of a hospital in the city by regime forces, who have struck the location several times in recent days.

There was no data immediately available on the casualties in the strikes on the Omar Abdul Aziz Hospital.

Hospitals are regularly targeted in Syria's war, drawing condemnation from the UN and the international community. The New York-based Physicians for Human Rights says over 90 percent of attacks on medical facilities in Syria have been carried out by pro-government forces.

Meanwhile shells fired by Syrian rebel groups killed at least 28 civilians in southwestern districts of the battleground city over the last 24 hours, a monitor said late Monday.

Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said those killed "included six children and eight women" in two government-controlled neighborhoods. He said dozens of people were also wounded.

Syrian state news agency SANA said that since Sunday, 20 civilians were killed and dozens wounded in shelling, rocket fire and sniper attacks on government-held neighborhoods.

It said nine people - among them three children - were killed on Monday and 11 people died in the attacks on Sunday.

Once Syria's economic powerhouse, Aleppo has been roughly divided between government control in the west and rebel control in the east since mid-2012.

In recent weeks, government forces have encircled the east, raising fears of a humanitarian crisis for the estimated 250,000 people now under siege there.

Last week, Moscow announced the opening of "humanitarian corridors" from the east into government territory for civilians and surrendering rebels.

More than 280,000 people have been killed since Syria's conflict erupted in March 2011 with anti-government protests that morphed into a brutal civil war.