Furthermore, Syrian government warplanes carried out 3 airstrikes on Orient Hospital, near Kafranabl area, south of Idlib, but no casualties were reported.
[25] In October 2017, the ICRC said that up to 10 hospitals had been reportedly damaged in the past 10 days, cutting off hundreds of thousands of people from access to healthcare, voicing alarm at the situation from Raqqa to Idlib and eastern Ghouta.
"For the past two weeks, we have seen an increasingly worrying spike in military operations that correlates with high levels of civilian casualties," Marianne Gasser, head of the ICRC's delegation in Syria, said.
[35] The UN humanitarian office said that, between late April and June 2019, a total of 24 health facilities and 35 schools were hit by the Syrian government and Russian air raids and rocket fire on the Idlib region.
[37][38] On 15 May 2019, Syrian government forces bombed the Tarmala Maternity and Children's Hospital in South Idlib, completely destroying the facility, which had served about 6,000 people a month.
[40] In October 2019, The New York Times published a story that proved that Russian forces deliberately bombed four hospitals in opposition-held Idlib province in May 2019.
[42] In February 2020, Russian warplanes hit two hospitals, as well as residential areas, in the northern town of Darat Izza near the Turkish border, wounding civilians and forcing the medical facilities to close.
[44] The report which contained 40 pages revealed thoroughly how the Syrian government forces intentionally attacked civilian facilities such as schools and hospitals.
[44] Among the documented attacks were Russian air strikes near a hospital in the town of Ariha on 29 January that flattened at least two residential buildings and killed 11 civilians.
[48] In late September 2016, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said attacks on hospitals in Aleppo constituted war crimes,[49] and the UN repeatedly accused the Syrian government and Russian warplanes of conducting a deadly campaign that appears to target medical facilities.
[46] In October 2016, the United States ended direct contact with Russians involved in a campaign against ISIL, to which Russia suspended an agreement it had with the U.S. regarding the reduction of plutonium.
[51] In February 2017, the Atlantic Council issued a report documenting Russian bombings of hospitals during the campaign to take Aleppo, which Russia has denied.
[52] In early June 2019, after more than 20 hospitals in Syria's north-west were targeted, dozens of prominent doctors – include Denis Mukwege, Peter Agre, Sarah Wollaston, Terence English, David Nott, and Zaher Sahloul – called for urgent action to halt the bombing campaign by Syrian and Russian planes, urging the UN to investigate the targeting of listed hospitals and asked the international community to put pressure on Russia and Syria to stop targeting medical centers and reverse funding cuts to surviving hospitals and clinics that were now overwhelmed by refugees.
[40] In October 2019, Susannah Sirkin, director of policy at Physicians for Human Rights, said "the attacks on health in Syria, as well as the indiscriminate bombing of civilian facilities, are definitely war crimes, and they should be prosecuted at the level of the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
"[44] The UN Director at Human Rights Watch, Louis Charbonneau, warned: "If Russia thinks this will help them escape accountability for war crimes, they're dead wrong.