“Schools, hospitals, mosques, water stations – they are all being turned into rubble,” chief of the UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria says
More than 700 doctors and medical personnel have been killed in attacks on Syrian hospitals since the outbreak of civil war more than five years ago, UN investigators said on Tuesday.
Commission chief Paulo Pinheiro told the UN Human Rights Council that widespread, targeted aerial attacks on hospitals and clinics across Syria “have resulted in scores of civilian deaths, including much-needed medical workers.”
“More than 700 doctors and medical personnel have been killed in attacks on hospitals since the beginning of the conflict,” he said.
Presenting report to the UN Human Rights Council, Paulo Pinheiro, chief of the UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria, noted that the attacks on medical facilities have left access to health care completely impossible in some areas. “As civilian casualties mount, the number of medical facilities and staff decreases, limiting even further access to medical care,” he said.
“Schools, hospitals, mosques, water stations – they are all being turned into rubble,” Pinheiro said. “Tens of thousands are trapped between frontlines and borders in the north and south of Syria.”
United Nations war crimes investigators called on world powers to pressure warring sides in Syria to return to the negotiating table and end the conflict and civilian suffering.
“To end their suffering (of the Syrians), we need more. We need all states to insist time and time again that influential states and the Security Council unconditionally support the political process. That they facilitate enforce the dialogue among the warring parties; that they do not compromise for anything less than a long lasting peace,” chairman Paulo Pinheiro told the Human Rights Council in Geneva, as the commission was giving an update of its investigations in Syria.
Syria’s ambassador Hussam Aala, in a speech to the rights forum, accused regional powers of “supporting terrorism” and “causing the failure of intra-Syrian talks in Geneva”.
He said schools and hospitals in Aleppo were being destroyed and civilians killed by missiles provided by Turkey and Qatar to the Nusra Front, al Qaeda’s Syrian branch.
European Union ambassador Peter Sorensen said: “The EU condemns the excessive, disproportionate and indiscriminate attacks that the Syrian regime continues to commit against its own people.”
The war in Syria broke out in March 2011, leaving more than 280,000 people dead and forcing half the population to flee their homes.
Attacks on hospitals are a major problem in Syria. Recently, Doctors Without Borders, known by its French acronym MSF, evacuated medics and patients from northern Syria as Islamic State militants neared.