Hospitals under 'unprecedented' attack in war zones: MSF

Medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) has hit out at the "unprecedented" number of attacks on medical facilities in Syria and Yemen, a year after the deadly bombing of its hospital in Afghanistan killed 42 people. 

Britain's Foreign Minister Boris Johnson echoed MSF’s concerns, Reuters reported, criticising Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Russia and saying that airstrikes against hospitals in Syria are war crimes.

'Hospitals are now part of the battlefield'

- Meinie Nicolai, MSF president

Monday marks the first anniversary of a US strike on the trauma centre in Kunduz, Afghanistan, which triggered global outrage. It forced President Barack Obama to make a rare apology on behalf of the US military still deployed in the war-torn country.

"Over the past year, we recorded 77 attacks against medical facilities operated or supported by MSF in Syria and Yemen. This is unprecedented," Meinie Nicolai, MSF president, told reporters in Kabul. "Hospitals are now part of the battlefield."

Johnson said: "It is the continuing savagery of the Assad regime against the people of Aleppo and the complicity of the Russians in committing what are patently war crimes - bombing hospitals, when they know they are hospitals and nothing but hospitals - that is making it impossible for peace negotiations to resume."

The Syrian military, supported by Iranian-backed militias and Russian air power, began a push to take the whole of the divided city of Aleppo after a ceasefire collapsed last month. The assault has almost destroyed the health-care system in eastern Aleppo, the UN said.

MSF has branded the US Kunduz attack a war crime. However, an investigation by the US military earlier this year concluded that the troops targeted the facility by mistake and decided they would not face war crimes charges. MSF had called repeatedly for an independent international inquiry.

The charity spoke out as condemnation grows about the bombing of hospitals in eastern Aleppo.

"Health facilities and staff are targeted in Yemen and Syria ... most often in the name of war against terrorism," Nicolai said.

'The entire city of Kunduz was judged as hostile. This is extremely shocking for us'

- Guilhem Molinie, MSF representative

"In Syria, attacks against medical centres for civilians and against ambulances are systematic. As of today, we are not back yet in Kunduz. We have left northern Yemen. We struggle to give support to the people in Syria."

Guilhem Molinie, MSF country representative in Afghanistan, said he had access to 700 of the 3,000 pages of the US report on Kunduz - but that the rest were classified.

"The US forces, operating in Kunduz on that date, assumed that self-defence was allowing them to attack," he said.

"The entire city of Kunduz was judged as hostile. This is extremely shocking for us; it means that everybody in the city on the date was assumed to be hostile."