Aleppo bombardments hit bakery, damage hospitals: residents

[September 28, 2016]    BEIRUT (Reuters) - Two hospitals were damaged and a bakery hit in bombardments of rebel-held eastern Aleppo early on Wednesday, residents said, as Syrian government forces pressed their Russian-backed campaign to retake the whole city.

Medics inspect the damage outside a field hospital after an airstrike in the rebel-held al-Maadi neighbourhood of Aleppo, Syria, September 28, 2016. REUTERS/Abdalrhman Ismail

At least six people were killed by artillery shelling in the al-Maadi neighborhood while they queued for bread at the bakery, residents and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

One of the damaged hospitals was near the bakery, and the other was in another part of Aleppo, the Sakhour district.

Mohammad Abu Rajab, a radiologist at the other hospital that was damaged, known as M10, said the missiles struck around 4 a.m. "The rubble fell in on the patients in the intensive care unit," he told Reuters from Aleppo.

The strikes also hit the hospital's oxygen and power generators, and patients were transferred to another hospital in the area, medical workers at the M10 hospital said.

Over 250,000 civilians are thought to be besieged in the rebel-held sector of Aleppo, where intensive bombing by government forces and their allies has killed hundreds of people since a ceasefire collapsed last week.

(Reporting by Ellen Francis; Editing by Mark Trevelyan and Dominic Evans)

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