At least 61 killed in Aleppo airstrikes, including 14 Doctors Without Borders staff, patients.
.Some of the overnight strikes, blamed largely on the embattled government in Damascus, hit the well-known al-Quds field hospital in the Sukkari district in Aleppo, according to opposition activists and rescue workers. They said 14 doctors and patients were among the dead.
A separate blitz in Aleppo reportedly killed 20, raising the 24-hour death toll in the key city to at least 61. Senior opposition official Anas al-Abdeh, the head of the Syrian National Council, claimed Syria's ally Russia may have taken part in the strikes as well.
The chief Syrian opposition negotiator Mohammed Alloush told The Associated Press the latest violence showed how negotiations, such as the February talks that led to a short-lived cease fire, were not realistic.
"Whoever carries out these massacres needs a war tribunal and a court of justice to be tried for his crimes. He does not need a negotiating table," Alloush told the AP in a telephone interview. "Now, the environment is not conducive for any political action."
The International Committee of the Red Cross warned that Aleppo was on the brink of a humanitarian disaster as a result of the renewed fighting.
"Wherever you are, you hear explosions of mortars, shelling and planes flying over," Valter Gros, who heads the ICRC office there, was quoted as saying Thursday in a statement, Reuters reported.
"There is no neighborhood of the city that hasn’t been hit. People are living on the edge. Everyone here fears for their lives and nobody knows what is coming next," he added.
Doctors Without Borders, also known by its French acronym MSF, said in a series of tweets that the death toll was expected to rise.
"Destroyed MSF-supported hospital in Aleppo was well known locally and hit by direct airstrike on Wednesday," it said.
The Civil Defense, a volunteer first-responders agency whose members went to the scene of the attack, put the death toll at 40 and said the dead included six hospital staff, including a dentist and one of the last pediatricians remaining in the city.
The agency, also known as the White Helmets, said the al-Quds hospital and adjacent buildings were struck in four consecutive airstrikes. It said there were still victims buried under the rubble and that the rescue work continued.
A video posted online by the White Helmets showed a number of lifeless bodies, including those of children, being pulled out from a building and loaded into ambulances amid screaming and wailing. It also showed distraught rescue workers trying to keep onlookers away from the scene, apparently fearing more airstrikes.
Marianne Gasser, head of the ICRC mission in Syria, said the attack on the ICRC-supported hospital is "unacceptable and sadly this is not the first time the lifesaving medical services have been hit."
The ICRC also said stocks of contingency food and medical aid are expected to run out soon and warned that an escalation in fighting means that they cannot be replenished.
Alloush, who was one of the leading negotiators of the opposition in the Geneva talks, described the airstrikes as one of the latest "war crimes" of Assad's government.
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