October 10, 2014

Aleppo's barrel bomb hospital

located:	Syria
editor:	Vanessa Ellingham

A moving new video report from Al Jazeera shows medics in a bombed-out Aleppo hospital struggling to keep their city alive amid barrel bombs dropped by the Syrian regime.

Barrel bombs, often crudely made from garbage cans or oil cannisters packed with explosives, are dropped from helicopters and planes over the city by Bashar Assad's men on his own people.

For more than a year now, the densely-populated rebel-held areas of the iconic city have been under siege by government troops, and the effort to wipe out rebels seems to be intensifying, according to the report.

The destruction on the city's homes, businesses, schools and hospitals has been devastating, with thousands of civilians indiscriminately wounded or killed.

The UN, along with human rights groups, have condemned the use of barrel bombs for this very reason: they are so indiscriminate.

The video report by Al Jazeera's Nagieb Khaja shows that just about the only place which isn't being hit by barrel bombs is the front line, likely because the regime is unable to control such haphazard weapons and is therefore afraid of bombing its own troops.

And yet the government is still bombing its own people, the people of Syria which is charged with serving, but has dismally failed since war broke out in 2011.

In the video report we see a day in the life of a surgeon in a hospital which runs on electricity from a generator that tends to clap out at crucial moments - like in the middle of providing a dying patient with CPR.

We take a trip in an ambulance with a rescue worker, who explains that "the government bombs a place and then it waits for people to come and start rescuing survivors. Then they return and bomb again."

The footage of this level of suffering is difficult to watch, but provides a memorable and vital image of the destruction taking place in Aleppo every day.

Watch the video here.