13 killed in hospital attack in Syria

Beirut: Missiles have hit a hospital in a northern Syrian town controlled by Turkey-backed fighters, killing at least 13 people, including two medical staff, and putting the facility out of service, activists and an aid group said.

It was not immediately clear who was behind the shelling, which came from areas where government troops and Kurdish-led fighters are deployed.

The governor of Turkey's Hatay's province, across the border from Afrin, also said the attack on Saturday killed 13 civilians and injured 27, adding that it involved rocket and artillery shelling of the hospital. The governor's office blamed the attack on Syrian Kurdish groups.

A war monitor, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, put the death toll at 18. The discrepancy could not



be immediately reconciled.

The Syrian American Medical Society, or SAMS, an aid group that assists health centers in opposition areas, said al-Shifaa Hospital in the town of Afrin was targeted by two missiles. The attack destroyed the polyclinic department, the emergency and the delivery rooms, the group said.

Two of the 13 people killed were hospital staff and two were ambulance drivers, said SAMS, which supports the hospital. Eleven of its staff were injured. The hospital has been put out of service and patients were evacuated, the group said.

SAMS called for an investigation into the attack on the hospital, one of the largest facilities in northern Syria that offered thousands of medical services each month.