- As at least, 27 are killed in airstrike on Syria hospital
Nearly 10,000 people have been killed and more than 20,000 injured since the Ukraine conflict began in April 2014, a top U.N. official said Thursday.
Assistant Secretary General for Political Affairs Taye-Brook Zerihoun told the Security Council that the total number of casualties now stands at 30,729 including 9,333 people killed and 21,396 injured.
He said the latest incident occurred on April 27 when shelling killed at least four civilians and injured at least eight people in Olenivka near the city of Donetsk.
Zerihoun said that fighting has escalated in recent weeks to levels not seen since August 2014, when it was at its most intense and he called on all parties to cease hostilities.
He criticized both sides for hindering access to an international monitoring mission put in place under the Minsk ceasefire agreement ironed out by the Ukraine, Russia, France and Germany on Feb. 14, 2015, but said that according to statistics provided by the monitors restrictions were more common in rebel-held areas.
Thursday’s Security Council meeting was the first to address the situation in Ukraine since December 2015.
During the meeting representatives from Russia and Ukraine traded bitter accusations over who was to blame for the flare-up in hostilities.
“Russia has organized and deployed in Donbas a 34,000-strong hybrid military force consisting of the regular Russian troops as well as of foreign and local militants. Russian generals and military officers provide direct command-and-control of this illegal military entity impressively heavily armed,” Vadym Prystaiko, Ukraine’s deputy minister of foreign affairs, told the council.
He claimed this force is better armed than most NATO members despite the Russians’ claims that the weapons were acquired in local hardware stores.
“Last time I checked you will hardly be able to buy a decent knife in Ukrainian hardware stores not to mention the multiple launch rocket systems and jet flamethrowers,” Prystaiko said.
Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin denounced the U.N. session as a play for time while Ukraine’s army occupies towns “in the neutral strip” stipulated by the Minsk agreement.
“Over the entire crisis the U.N. has been used as a propaganda platform,” Churkin said, dismissing the Ukraine statement before the Security Council as “very disappointing,” and “a lot of rhetoric.”
Russia tried to circulate a press statement that would reaffirm the U.N.’s commitment to the Minsk agreement, but failed to gain consensus approval because it also called for an investigation into the killing of Russian protesters in Odessa, without mentioning violations of the ceasefire by rebel forces.
The U.S., France and Britain all denounced Russian aggression for igniting the conflict.
“What is happening today is the result of Russia’s violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity which began with its occupation of Crimea more than two years ago and expanded with substantial military on the ground and weapons support for armed separatists in Eastern Ukraine,” U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power told the council.
Meanwhile, an airstrike on a hospital in the rebel-held Syrian city of Aleppo Thursday killed at least 27 people, the latest in what Amnesty International calls a recurring tactic in the Syrian civil war.
Days of airstrikes and shelling in Aleppo, which is split between President Bashar Assad’s government forces and rebels, have killed about 200 people in Syria in the past week, according to the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Doctors Without Borders, which supports the hospital, expects the death toll to rise. The international aid organization said the facility in Aleppo was hit by a direct airstrike and among the dead are at least three doctors, including one of the last pediatricians in the city.
It wasn’t immediately clear who was responsible for the strike.
White House press secretary Josh Earnest called the airstrike “appalling,” saying the attack “fits the Assad regime’s abhorrent pattern of striking first responders.”
He also said the strikes put pressure on the already fragile peace talks in Geneva.
Najib al-Ansar, a Syrian Civil Defense official in Aleppo, said the hospital was hit by Russian airstrikes, according to Turkey’s Andalou Agency. The Syrian opposition accused the government of Damascus and Russia for the bombings. But Russia denied it was responsible. The Russian Defense Ministry spokesman, Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov, said Russian aircraft have not flown any missions in the region in the past several days, the Associated Press reported.
Greg Archetto, a former Defense Department official who worked with members of the Syrian armed opposition in Jordan, said the Russians and Syrians are fighting to win the war in Syria, and have little regard for how it looks to outsiders.
“The Russians don’t care about international public opinion and neither does Assad,” Archetto said. “Destroying the enemy is the goal and they are doing that from their perspective. Whether or not it is morally right is inconsequential. They have their strategic objectives and they are achieving them.”
Chris Harmer, a Syria analyst at the Institute for the Study of War in Washington, said it’s unclear if the hospital was deliberately targeted, but the airstrike “is consistent with the Assad regime strategy of killing or depopulating any civilian population opposed to his rule.”
“It is beyond dispute that the Assad regime has deliberately targeted hospitals in the past,” Harmer said. “The Syrian strategy of killing or depopulating civilians has been relatively effective at preserving the Assad regime and gradually attriting and degrading the human and geographical terrain controlled by the rebels.”
Amnesty International said in a statement last month that Syrian and Russian forces have been deliberately attacking health facilities as “part of their military strategy.”
Charles Lister, a Syria analyst at the Middle East Institute, agreed, saying that “targeted destruction of key sources of civilian services, like hospitals, schools, markets and IDP camps, has been commonplace.”
“Destroying such targets prior to a major ground operation acts to fundamentally undermine the capacity for the opposition to present a viable alternative,” Lister said.”It also helps to encourage mass displacement of civilians, which further destabilizes the eventual target of attack.”
The attack highlights the deterioration of a cease-fire agreement that had been agreed to in February. Russia and the Assad regime have ramped up attacks in recent days. “It is not being completely abided by, especially by Syrian regime,” Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said in congressional testimony Thursday.
MSN with additional report from USA Today
