Yahoo Finance Aleppo's 'Last Paediatrician' Dies In Airstrike
Syria's fragile ceasefire is hanging by a thread after airstrikes on an Aleppo hospital killed at least 27 people, including a doctor believed to be the city's last paediatrician.
It comes as the UN called on the US and Russia to salvage the "barely alive" two-month truce and make urgent efforts to revitalise the peace process.
The four consecutive strikes hit and destroyed Al Quds hospital and nearby homes in the rebel-held district of Sukkari just before midnight on Wednesday.
Three children are believed to be among the dead, with Doctors Without Borders - which helps support the hospital - saying 14 patients and medical staff had died.
The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights put the total number of dead at at least 27.
Volunteer rescue team The White Helmets are continuing to dig through the debris in an attempt to locate and recover survivors.
A tweet from the Syrian Coalition said the number of dead could rise significantly.
Mohammed Alloush, the political leader of the country's Saudi-backed rebel group Jaysh al-Islam (Army of Islam), and one of the leading opposition negotiators at February's peace talks in Geneva, blamed the attack on President Bashar al Assad.
:: Syria's Ceasefire Has Been Blown To Pieces
"Whoever carries out these massacres needs a war tribunal and a court of justice to be tried for his crimes. He does not need a negotiating table," he said.
"Now, the environment is not conducive for any political action."
The ceasefire brokered by the US and Russia in February has been crumbling, as casualty figures from government and opposition violence escalate in Aleppo and across northern Syria.
Since mid-April some 200 people are reported to have been killed, including at least 44 in an airstrike on a market in a rebel-held area of Idlib and dozens of civilians in government-held areas during rebel shelling.
UN Special Envoy Staffan de Mistura expressed concern the truce was beginning to unravel in rebel-held areas and urged a new US and Russian initiative to save the peace process.
"There is no reason that both of them (that) have a common interest in not seeing Syria ending up in another cycle of war should not be able to revitalise what they have created and which is still alive but barely," he said.
