At least 14 killed after air strike hits MSF-supported hospital in Syria

Two other doctors were also among those killed, the Britain-based war monitor said. 

The hospital was supported by the international medical organisation Médecins sans Frontières (MSF), who said on its Twitter account it was destroyed after being hit by a direct air strike.

At least 14 patients and staff, including at least three doctors, were killed, MSF said.

According to hospital staff on the ground, the hospital was destroyed by at least one airstrike which directly hit the building, reducing it to rubble, MSF said in a statement. 

"MSF categorically condemns this outrageous targeting of yet another medical facility in Syria," said Muskilda Zancada, MSF head of mission, Syria. "This devastating attack has destroyed a vital hospital in Aleppo, and the main referral centre for paediatric care in the area. Where is the outrage among those with the power and obligation to stop this carnage?"

"Eight doctors and 28 nurses worked full time in the hospital, which was the main referral centre for paediatrics in Aleppo," MSF said.

Escalating violence in Aleppo is pushing people living there to the brink of a humanitarian disaster, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said in Geneva.

"Wherever you are, you hear explosions of mortars, shelling and planes flying over," Valter Gros, who heads the ICRC office there, was quoted as saying in the statement.

"There is no neighborhood of the city that hasn’t been hit. People are living on the edge. Everyone here fears for their lives and nobody knows what is coming next," he said.

Aleppo has been the epicenter of a military escalation that has helped to undermine U.N.-led peace talks in recent weeks. A cessation of hostilities agreement has unraveled and fighting has resumed on numerous fronts in western Syria.

The Observatory said air strikes on rebel-held areas of Aleppo had killed 91 citizens in the past six days while rebel shelling of government-held areas had claimed 49 lives.

The ICRC said the intense battles raging in Aleppo had worsened the humanitarian plight of tens of thousands of residents in the city, which it described as one of the worst affected in five years of conflict.

The hospital that was destroyed had 34 beds hospital and offered services including an emergency room, obstetric care, an outpatients department, an inpatients department, an intensive care unit and an operating theatre, according to MSF. 

In the hospital bombing, Bebars Mishal of the Civil Defence in Aleppo told Reuters that 40 people had been killed in a five-storey building next to the hospital.

A Syrian military source said government warplanes had not been used in areas where airstrikes were reported.

The Russian defense ministry, which is also conducting air strikes in Syria in support of President Bashar al-Assad, could not immediately be reached for comment. Russia has previously denied hitting civilian targets in Syria.

U.N. envoy Staffan de Mistura said on Thursday the cessation of hostilities agreement was "barely alive".

Peace talks he has convened in Geneva were undermined last week when the main opposition alliance walked out, citing ongoing violence and calling for proper implementation of a U.N. resolution requiring full humanitarian access to besieged areas.