BEIRUT: Warplanes struck a town in a rebel-held enclave in northwestern Syria, killing at least 10 people including some who were fleeing the bombs, opposition activists and a rescue service said Thursday. The attack, believed carried out by Russian warplanes backing a Syrian government offensive, put a local hospital out of service, they said.

The late Wednesday night assault on Ariha, a town in Idlib province, comes as the rebel-held enclave is under intense fire amid Syrian government advances on the area, which had been controlled by the opposition for nearly eight years.

The Russian Defence Ministry rejected claims it was behind the attack, calling them a provocation. The ministry said Russian warplanes did not fly any combat missions in the area.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the death toll from the air strikes was at least 10 civilians. Both the Observatory and the White Helmets said a local hospital and a bakery were struck. At least 24 people were wounded, including a doctor, a White Helmet volunteer, three women and two children, the rescuers said.

At least six people, relatives of patients, were killed as they waited outside the hospital, said Zuheir Qarat, a surgeon. An anesthesiologist was critically wounded, Qarat said, and remained at the hospital for over an hour until rescuers were able to evacuate him after the raids ended, along with 15 patients.

Hospital generators and one hospital car were burned, he added. No patients were hurt.

Qarat described three raids before midnight, within minutes of each other. It destroyed the hospital and put it out of service, Qarat said in a voice message from Ariha. There were also people injured from neighboring buildings.

The Ariha hospital, also know as al-Shami, is the only medical facility in the area with surgical facilities. There are no government-run hospitals in opposition-held areas, where health and education services are based on donations and international aid.

Hospital director Waguih Qarat said the hospital’s coordinates have been shared with the UN for three years and said the government and Russia know it is a medical facility. He said the strikes came hours after dozens of dead and wounded from a separate airstrike in a village nearby were transported to the hospital. Most the patients were wounded in that strike.

Qarat said that striking the hospital is a message ... a warning to evacuate, adding that Ariha residents started fleeing after the raids. The hospital was the third that Qarat had worked in, after the previous two were also bombed.

The UN Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Mark Lowcock described to the Security Council on Wednesday the dire conditions in the rebel-held areas. At least 20,000 people were displaced in the last two days, he said, adding that 115,000 left their homes in the past week, bringing total of those uprooted by the violence since December to 390,000.

Published in Dawn, January 31st, 2020