Syria’s remaining hospitals under bombardment

It appears that the already severely degraded medical services available to civilians in Syria are diminishing fast under assault from barrel bombs. At least ten Syrian hospitals have been attacked like this in the past month.

According to Medecins Sans Frontieres the only facility able to deliver neonatal and dialysis in the southern city of Dara’a has been destroyed this week by barrel bomb assault.

On Monday night ten barrel bombs were dropped by government helicopters quartering the area. Four were dropped at around 11pm after which medical staff were evacuated.

An hour later another six bombs were dropped destroying half the medical equipment and severely damaging the building according to staff. Staff that is, unwilling for obvious reasons to give their names.

This attack comes only a few days after another barrel bomb attack on the hospital supported by MSF at the other end of the country in Aleppo, in the north.

Staff there report that both the number and the intensity of these attacks are increasing and are beginning to force the remaining few medics into fleeing from the situation altogether.

MSF Head of Mission in Syria Carlos Francisco said:

“There is a lack of human medical resources because the majority of doctors are going to the countryside or to Turkey. If attacks continue, I expect most medical staff will leave.”

They say they are feeling let down by the international community – but in the Syrian contest it is very hard to work out what international “community” exists with regard to a country whose civil war external superpowers have been completely incapable of stopping and arguably have prolonged the whole bloody business.

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