ISIL terrorists attack on Syrian hospital claims 20 lives

Nearly two dozen people have been killed in an attack by the ISIL Takfiri terrorist group on a hospital in eastern Syria.

According to Press TV, pro-terrorist sources said Saturday that the attack on al-Assad hospital in the city of Dayr al-Zawr killed 20 people, most of them Syrian soldiers and allied fighters.

The so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the attack came at the eastern entrance of the hospital and sparked clashes between government forces and ISIL terrorists. The London-based monitoring group said at least six terrorists from the Takfiri group were killed. There were no immediate reports about the number of the wounded.

The group claimed terrorists are now in control of the hospital along with a dormitory and a silo facility. Syrian media said troops have locked the militants inside the hospital with fighting going on.

Local media said the attack on the hospital was part of a larger terrorist offensive into Dayr al-Zawr which began late Friday.

They said terrorists were attempting to capture key facilities in the city, adding that a similar attack on the city’s main airport was thwarted by Syrian forces.

The attack on the Assad hospital in Dayr al-Zawr is the latest in a string of terrorists’ raids on health-care facilities. ISIL, which is controlling parts of land in Syria and neighboring Iraq, has repeatedly used civilian structures like hospitals and schools as a main target of its attacks in Syria. Rights group have documented numerous cases of such bombings and attacks over the past months.

Physicians for Human Rights said in a recent research that terrorist forces had carried out about a dozen attacks on medical facilities with ISIL being responsible for at least eight of them, noting more than a dozen medical staff have been killed in those attacks.

SS