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Around 25 people
who were in the hospital at the time were evacuated and no one
was hurt, Issam al-Reis, spokesman for the Free Syrian Army
Southern Front groups, said in an emailed statement, but all the
hospital's medical equipment was destroyed.
The army has dropped up to 45 barrel bombs on Daraya, launched
dozens of rockets at the area and shelled it heavily since
midnight, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a U.K.-based
war monitoring group, said on Friday.
Barrel bombs are oil drums packed with explosive material and
shrapnel that set fires and cause bad burns. Their use was
condemned by the United Nations Security Council last year.
The Syrian military could not immediately be reached for
comment. The government has previously denied dropping barrel
bombs, but their use has been widely recorded by a U.N.
commission of inquiry on Syria.
Daraya, only 12km (seven miles) from Damascus, has been besieged
by the government since 2012, but aid agencies gained access to
the town during a humanitarian cessation of hostilities earlier
this year.
Neither Islamic State group nor Jabhat Fatah al-Sham, formerly
known as Nusra Front and aligned with al Qaeda until last month,
are based in Daraya, Reis said.
On Tuesday, Human Rights Watch said in a report that Syria and
Russia, which intervened in the war a year ago with airstrikes
in support of the government, were using incendiary weapons in
the civil war in violation of international law.
"Incendiary weapons produce heat and fire through the chemical
reaction of a flammable substance, causing excruciatingly
painful burns that are difficult to treat," its report said.
"The weapons also start fires that are hard to extinguish,
destroying civilian objects and infrastructure," it said.
(Reporting By Angus McDowall, editing by Larry King)
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