Airstrikes on Syria’s Aleppo destroy more hospitals as terrible life conditions continue

Syrian government air strikes have put four makeshift hospitals and a local blood bank in Aleppo out of action in the past 24 hours, according to local rescue workers and a monitor.

“Five medical facilities were hit [overnight] and are out of service right now,” Ammar Salmo, spokesman for a volunteer rescue group known as the White Helmets told Al Jazeera.

The bombardment killed a two-day-old baby in a children’s hospital in a besieged eastern neighbourhood of Aleppo, said the Independent Doctors Association, a group of Syrian doctors that supports clinics in the city.

Al Jazeera’s Bernard Smith, reporting from Gazientep along the Turkey-Syria border, said that several of the hospitals hit are still able to function.

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“Only one of the hospitals has suffered a direct hit. People there say it has stopped operations for the moment, but we are told it will be back up in a couple of days,” Smith said.

“The other hospitals and the blood bank were in an area where there were air strikes rather than them been apparently directly targeted. No buildings have been destroyed but operations have been affected in this places. There is supposed to be a ceasefire which began in February that clearly is all but in name,” he added.

Pro-government forces have surrounded the rebel-held eastern half of the city for more than 15 days, in an attempt to take full control of the strongest rebel bastion in the country’s north.

Salmo of the White Helmets told Al Jazeera there were now only two functioning bakeries in a city of 300,000 people.