by WorldTribune Staff, October 4, 2016

A bunker-buster bomb hit the main trauma hospital in the rebel-held eastern part of Aleppo on Oct. 3 in the third airstrike on the facility in a week, reports say.

“The hospital is now not usable at all. It is not salvageable,” Adham Sahloul of the Syrian American Medical Society was quoted as saying by AFP.

Three maintenance staff were killed in the attack, which Sahloul said left a 10-meter deep (33 feet) crater outside the hospital’s front entrance.

A senior United Nations official warned that the healthcare system in eastern Aleppo had been “obliterated” and called on both sides to agree to 48-hour humanitarian pauses to allow in aid.

Medical facilities are being destroyed “one-by-one” as eastern Aleppo is pounded with bunker-busting bombs, barrel bombs, mortar rounds and artillery shells, UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Stephen O’Brien said.

Patients are being turned away, no medicines are available to treat even the most common ailments, and the number of people requiring urgent medical evacuations is likely to rise dramatically with clean water and food in very short supply, O’Brien said.

Meanwhile, the U.S. State Department on Oct. 3 confirmed it was suspending negotiations with Russia after it said Moscow had increased bombardments of civilian targets.

Russia and the U.S. were scheduled to meet in Geneva to coordinate airstrikes against jihadist groups, but American officials were told to return home.

State Department spokesman John Kirby said in a statement the decision was “not taken lightly.”

Kirby said both the Russian and Syrian governments had chosen a military course of action “inconsistent with the cessation of hostilities,” adding that Russia had “failed to live up to its own commitments – including its obligations under international humanitarian law.”

  bunker-buster bombs, Hospital in rebel-held Aleppo hit by third airstrike in week, John Kirby, Syrian American Medical Society, WorldTribune.com