Shelling at Hospital in North Syria Town Kills at Least 6

Shells hit a hospital on Saturday in a northern Syrian town controlled by Turkey-backed fighters, killing at least six people, including two medical staff, activists and a medical group said.

It was not immediately clear who was behind the shelling, which came from areas where government troops and Kurdish-led fighters are deployed.

The Syrian American Medical Association, an aid group that assists health centers in opposition areas, said al-Shifaa Hospital in the town of Afrin had been targeted by two missiles.

At least four other medical staff members were injured, one seriously, the aid group said. The polyclinic department and delivery room were destroyed, it added.

Turkey and allied Syrian fighters took control of Afrin in 2018 in a military operation that expelled local Kurdish fighters and displaced thousands of Kurdish residents. Ankara considers the Kurdish fighters who were in control of Afrin terrorists. Since then, there have been a series of attacks on Turkish targets in the area.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 16 people were killed in the attack, most of them civilians.

The governor’s office of Turkey’s Hatay province, which lies across the border from Afrin, said 13 civilians had been killed and 27 injured in the rocket and artillery attack on the hospital, which it blamed on Kurdish militants.

The discrepancy in death tolls could not be immediately reconciled.

Source:VOA