Jets hit Aleppo hospitals
Suspected regime air raids have hit four makeshift hospitals in Syria's battered Aleppo city, doctors said yesterday, jeopardising medical care for more than 200,000 desperate civilians in rebel-held areas.
The bombardment since Saturday has worsened the plight of residents of besieged eastern neighbourhoods of Syria's second city, where food and medical supplies are becoming increasingly scarce.
The hospitals, as well as a blood bank that was hit, were located in the Al-Shaar neighbourhood, said the Independent Doctor's Association, a group of Syrian doctors that supports clinics in Aleppo.
It said a two-day-old baby was killed in the children's hospital when his oxygen supply was cut after a raid during the early hours of Sunday.
It was the second strike on the same hospital in about nine hours, according to the IDA.
All four hospitals were out of service yesterday. According to the IDA, five hospitals are left operating in eastern neighbourhoods of Aleppo city, devastated by a regime siege that took hold earlier this month.
According to the World Health Organisation, Syria was the most dangerous place for health care workers to operate last year, with 135 attacks on health facilities and workers in 2015.
Syria's conflict has so far killed at least 280,000 people and more than half the population have been forced to flee their homeS.
Repeated attempts -- particularly by the United States and regime ally Russia -- at securing a political settlement built on a teetering ceasefire have failed.
Moscow and Washington are nominally co-chairs of international efforts to bring President Bashar al-Assad's regime to the negotiating table with armed opposition groups.
The UN has set August as the target date for the resumption of talks.
Yesterday, the foreign ministry in Damascus said Syria "is ready to continue the Syrian-Syrian dialogue without any preconditions, in the hopes that this dialogue will lead to a comprehensive solution".
The statement, carried by state news agency SANA and quoting an anonymous foreign ministry official, also said Syria would be "ready to coordinate air operations against terrorism as part of the agreement between Russia and the United States."
In Libya, forces loyal to Libya's unity government yesterday said they had seized a building used by the Islamic State group to manufacture explosives in its coastal stronghold.
The bomb factory is the largest to be captured by fighters allied with the Tripoli-based Government of National Accord (GNA) since they launched an operation to retake Sirte in May, the forces said on Facebook.
The violence came after Arab foreign ministers on Saturday vowed to "defeat terrorism", as they gathered for a regional summit.
In a statement, they also called for a "definitive solution" to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as Arab League heads of state prepared to meet in the Mauritanian capital on Monday and Tuesday. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Saudi King Salman are both expected to attend the upcoming summit.
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