UN condemns reported bombing of Aleppo hospital

United Nations chief Ban Ki-Moon has described the bombing of crucial facility in rebel-held district of the city of Aleppo earlier this week as a war crime.

According to witnesses, the largest hospital in the rebel-held side of Aleppo has been devastated by barrel bombs as forces loyal to the Russia-backed government intensified their assault on the area with a major weekend offensive, reports the Guardian.

The crucial facility, known as M10, had already been put out of service before the latest attack, having suffered a heavy bombardment three days earlier, in an assault that the UN chief, Ban Ki-moon, denounced as a war crime.

According to the Syrian American Medical Society (Sams), with M10 and the second-largest hospital in the eastern part of the city now both out of use, only six operational hospitals remain in the region.

"Two barrel bombs hit the M10 hospital and there were reports of a cluster bomb as well," said Adham Sahloul of Sams.

The recent surge in attacks in Aleppo from forces loyal to the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, has been some of the worst in the country's five-year civil war.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based monitoring group, said airstrikes also hit a smaller field hospital in the Sakhur neighbourhood on Saturday.

Russian warplanes were also involved in the attacks on Saturday as the army shelled the besieged old quarter in a major offensive.

The airstrikes focused on major supply lines into rebel-held areas - the Castello Road and Malah district - while fighting raged in the Suleiman al-Halabi neighbourhood, the frontline to the north of Aleppo's old city.