Air strikes by the Syrian government damaged a hospital in the northern city of Aleppo early yesterday and flattened a building next to it, killing at least 15 people and leaving as many as 40 missing.
The attack closed one of the city’s few functioning medical facilities, anti-government activists said.
Video purporting to depict the aftermath showed the façade shorn off the first three storeys of the hospital, with its name, Dar el-Shifa, in red letters on its tower. Beside it, another building was reduced to a two-storey pile of rubble.
Among the 15 people confirmed dead were two hospital workers and two children, an activist in Aleppo said, adding that up to 40 people were still believed to be trapped under the rubble.
One man was pulled out alive several hours after the explosion, according to another video posted on the internet by opponents of President Bashar al-Assad.
Rebels, meanwhile, claimed to have seized a military base in eastern Syria, giving them control of an area of oil-producing territory as tensions grew between ethnic Kurds and anti-government rebels in northeastern Syria.