US-led coalition hits Raqqah hospital with white phosphorus: Red Crescent official

This US Navy handout photo, obtained on July 1, 2017, shows an F/A-18E Super Hornet as it prepares to land aboard the aircraft carrier USS George H. W. Bush in the Mediterranean Sea on June 25, 2017. (Via AFP)

The US-led coalition purporting to be targeting Daesh in Syria is said to have hit the National Hospital in the northern city of Raqqah with internationally-banned white phosphorus bombs.

Dina al-Asa’ad, who is the deputy director of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent’s branch in the city, said coalition warplanes had struck the hospital on Thursday, the country’s official Syrian Arab News Agency said.

She said the aircraft also released more than 20 apparently conventional shells against the facility, which hit its interior, electricity generators, and ambulances.

The facility, she said, catered to the needs of more than 100,000 patients.

Al-Asa’ad also blamed the coalition, which has been bombing Syria-based targets since 2014, and the US-backed anti-Damascus so-called Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) for leading a “scorched earth” policy against the city, rather than trying to liberate it.

She said the coalition and the SDF had laid waste to all of the city’s schools, mosques, bakeries, its sugar factory, and governmental buildings.

A US Navy photo obtained on July 29, 2017 shows the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz, which has been deployed to the Persian Gulf in support of the United States-led coalition bombing Syria and Iraq, on July 26, 2017. (Via AFP)

‘Coalition kills 30 civilians’

Meanwhile, Syrian government sources said at least 30 people had been killed in the latest attacks by the coalition in Raqqah.

The latest toll brought to over 65 the total number of civilians killed by US aerial raids on Raqqah since the beginning of the week.

Army gains

Separately, the Syrian army took control of the al-Madkhal neighborhood and Tantor Mountain in the city of al-Sukhnah in the central Syria Homs Province.

Backed by civil defense fighters, the army also made fresh gains in the southeastern Syria al-Suwayda Province near the Jordan-Syria borders, where it recaptured the al-Dhubi’aiyah, Ber al-Rafa’a, al-Hardiyah, and Wadi al-Sawt areas from the US-backed forces, a military source said.

The operation, the source said, had killed and injured a large number of the anti-government forces.