{Rebels lose two hilltops and two villages as government is accused of targeting six hospitals in and around Aleppo.}<\/p>\n
Syrian government forces backed by Russian air strikes have recaptured hills and villages from rebel groups on the outskirts of south-western Aleppo, a monitoring group and state-run media have said. <\/p>\n
Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said on Wednesday that the government had been launching a counterattack on areas captured by rebels in the past two days. <\/p>\n
“Since the attack began and until Tuesday midnight, 40 civilians have been killed on both sides of Aleppo, among them 22 children,” Abdel Rahman said. <\/p>\n
About 50 rebels and dozens of regime troops have been killed since the assault kicked off on Sunday, according to the Observatory.<\/p>\n
Syrian state-run radio confirmed that government troops had started a “wide-scale counterattack” against rebels in south-west Aleppo.<\/p>\n
“There are tit-for-tat attacks in all areas across south-western Aleppo, amid dozens of Russian strikes on areas which were taken by the rebels,” Kenan, an activist based in the rebel-held Salaheddine neighbourhood of Aleppo, told the Dpa news agency via Facebook.<\/p>\n
Government troops managed to seize two hilltops including Telat al-Mahroukat and the villages of Khweriz and al-Amriyeh, which the rebels took control of two days ago, the Observatory said. <\/p>\n
Hospitals attacked<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the New York-based Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) said on Wednesday that over the past week, Syrian government forces launched deadly air strikes against six hospitals in and around Aleppo.<\/p>\n
The group said in a statement that this was the worst week for attacks on medical facilities in the region since the Syrian conflict began in 2011.<\/p>\n
PHR said it had verified each attack.<\/p>\n
All six facilities hit between July 23 and July 31 were major hospitals in Aleppo governorate, including a referral hospital just outside opposition-held eastern Aleppo and a pediatric clinic inside the city where four infants died after their oxygen supply was cut, the group said.<\/p>\n
“Since June, we’ve seen increasing reports of attacks on civilians in Aleppo and strikes on the region’s remaining medical infrastructure. Each of these assaults constitutes a war crime,” said Widney Brown, PHR’s director of programs.<\/p>\n
“Destroying hospitals is tantamount to signing thousands of death warrants for people now stranded in eastern Aleppo.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{Rebels lose two hilltops and two villages as government is accused of targeting six hospitals in and around Aleppo.} Syrian government forces backed by Russian air strikes have recaptured hills and villages from rebel groups on the outskirts of south-western Aleppo, a monitoring group and state-run media have said. Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[101],"byline":[2474],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-27439","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-internationl","byline-al-jazeera"],"bylines":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27439","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27439"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27439\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27439"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=27439"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=27439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}