More than 80 people - including children - killed in 250 air strikes overnight
THIS is the chilling moment Syrian warplanes bombed a children's hospital in the east of Aleppo as doctors treated victims of a gas attack on a local school.
Security cameras show the devastation caused when bombs ripped through the only medical centre still left operating in the east of the war-torn city.
At the time of the attack, medical staff were treating victims of a chlorine gas bomb attack on a nearby school which had happened just hours earlier.
Seven children were killed at the school in a government-held area of Aleppo as bombs laced with chlorine gas rained down.
Rebel shelling killed the children in the Saria Hasoun school in al-Farqan district, Syrian state television and The Syrian Observatory reported.
A video shows the dead bodies of four children on the floor.
Medics also said a family of six nearby had suffocated to death after a barrel bomb, which fell in the Sakhour district at about midnight, had been laced with the deadly gas.
Those that survived the chlorine attacks at the school were taken to a nearby children's hospital only for that to then be targeted by Syrian war planes.
Frightened staff were forced forcing to evacuate babies in incubators and other patients injured over days of constant bombardment.
As many as 250 strikes, including with barrel bombs, missiles, and artillery shelling, ripped through several neighbourhoods of Aleppo on Saturday.
At least 81 people were killed in the strikes overnight.
There were so many airstrikes across Aleppo that the emergency teams which rescue survivors from rubble and put out fires said they were struggling to reach all the bomb sites.
The latest assault on Aleppo is part of a wider attack on Syrian rebels launched from the ground, the air and the sea, with a Russian aircraft carrier firing missiles from off the Syrian coast.
Medical and food supplies stockpiled in preparation are now dwindling after months without being restocked and, with winter closing in, the people trapped in Aleppo face “a very bleak moment”, a senior UN humanitarian official warned..
The children’s hospital, which was also hit on Thursday, had to evacuate as its doctors treated victims of the chlorine attack who were struggling to breathe.
“We are moving the children’s hospital because it has been hit twice this week and is considered a full-on target,” the Independent Doctors Association said.
“We took the decision to evacuate it today, to relocate the staff and patients elsewhere.”
It is believed the bomb which hit the hospital was a vacuum missile, fired by Syrian government forces, the IDA said.
Footage shot by an al-Jazeera reporter who was covering the aftermath of the chlorine gas attack showed the hospital plunged into darkness.
Doctors and nurses used torches and mobile phones as they rushed to collect babies from their incubators, wrap them in blankets and take them to a basement office, where they were lined up together for a little extra warmth.
Fourteen babies were later driven through the shelling to another location so their treatment could be restarted, one of the paediatricians confirmed.
“As we drove out with the ambulance, warplanes were firing and artillery were shelling,” he said by text message. “But thank God we were not hurt.”
A video obtained by the Associated Press also showed the moment a paediatric hospital was struck by Syrian warplanes.
