Close to 50 dead from suspected Russian airstrikes on hospitals and a school in rebel-held Syria

Close to 50 civilians were killed and more wounded when missiles hit three hospitals and a school in rebel-held Syrian towns on Monday, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said, as Russian-backed Syrian troops intensified their push toward the rebel stronghold of Aleppo.

According to UN deputy spokesman Farhan Haq, Ban said the attacks were "blatant violations of international laws" that "are further degrading an already devastated health care system and preventing access to education in Syria."

Fourteen people were killed in the town of Azaz near the Turkish border when missiles slammed into a school sheltering families fleeing the offensive and the children's hospital, two residents and a medic said.

Bombs also hit another refugee shelter south of the town and a convoy of trucks, another resident said.

"We have been moving scores of screaming children from the hospital," medic Juma Rahal said. At least two children were killed and scores of people injured, according to him.

Activists posted video online purporting to show the damaged hospital. Three crying babies lay in incubators in a ward littered with broken medical equipment. Reuters could not independently verify the video.

In a separate incident, missiles hit another hospital in the town of Marat Numan in Idlib province, in north western Syria, said the French president of the Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) charity, which was supporting the hospital.

"There were at least seven deaths among the personnel and the patients, and at least eight MSF personnel have disappeared, and we don't know if they are alive," Mego Terzian told Reuters.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which tracks violence across the country, said one male nurse was killed and five female nurses, a doctor and one male nurse are believed to be under the rubble in the MSF hospital.

"The destruction of the hospital leaves the local population of around 40,000 people without access to medical services in an active zone of conflict," MSF mission chief Massimiliano Rebaudengo said, the Associated Press notes.

Also in Marat Numan, another strike hit the National Hospital on the north edge of town, killing two nurses, the Observatory said.

Residents in both towns blamed Russian strikes, saying the planes deployed were more numerous and the munitions more powerful than the Syrian military typically used.

"The author of the strike is clearly ... either the government or Russia," he said, adding that it was not the first time MSF facilities in Syria had been attacked.

"We think it is Russia because the photos of the missiles have Russian language (and) because we haven't seen this kind (of missile) before the Russian intervention," Abdulrahman Al-Hassan, chief liaison officer at the Syrian Civil Defense, told the Associated Press.

The attack on the civilian targets come just one day after US President Barack Obama called Russian President Vladimir Putin and asked him to stop bombing moderate opposition targets in Syria.

The US Department of State has called Russia's motives in Syria into question with a statement that read in part:

"That the Assad regime and its supporters would continue these attacks, without cause and without sufficient regard for international obligations to safeguard innocent lives, flies in the face of the unanimous calls by the ISSG (International Syria Security Group), including in Munich, to avoid attacks on civilians and casts doubt on Russia's willingness and/or ability to help bring to a stop the continued brutality of the Assad regime against its own people."

Col. Steve Warren, the Pentagon's spokesperson for Operation Inherent Resolve, which includes the US air campaign in Syria, took to Twitter soon after to confirm that US-led coalitions had not bombed anywhere near the hospital on Monday.

Rescue workers and rights groups say Russian bombing has killed scores of civilians at market places, hospitals, schools and residential areas in Syria. Western countries also say Russia has been attacking mostly Western-backed insurgent groups.

But Moscow has said it is targeting "terrorist groups" and dismissed any suggestion it has killed civilians since beginning its air campaign in support of President Bashar al-Assad's forces in September.

The town of Azaz has been the scene of fierce fighting as Kurdish anti-government forces advance from the west. They have reached the edge of town, only a few kilometers away from the main Bab al Salam border crossing. The Syrian army is advancing from the south.

Both the Kurds and the army want to wrest control of that stretch of border with Turkey from the insurgents that currently hold Azaz.

Russian bombing raids on rebel fighters are helping the Syrian army to advance toward Aleppo, the country's largest city and commercial center before the conflict. If the army takes the city, it will by the Syrian government's biggest victory of the war.

The Daily Mail posted the following video reportedly showing a Russian airstrike using clusterbombs, an internationally banned munition, in Aleppo:

SEE ALSO: Obama to Putin: Stop bombing moderate Syrian opposition

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