Baladi News - Journals
Syrian government and Russian armed forces deliberately and repeatedly targeted ambulances as part of a calculated strategy to gain the upper hand in the country’s civil war, a new study has claimed.
Researchers analysed over 200 individual attacks involving 243 ambulances, more than half of which were deliberately targeted. Some 60 per cent of the attacks were carried out by Syrian government forces, while 29 per cent were blamed on Russia, which joined the conflict on the side of Bashar al-Assad in 2015.
The “weaponisation of healthcare” has been used throughout the conflict “to destabilise, intimidate, and demoralise”, the researchers wrote in BMJ Global Health, a peer-reviewed online journal.
After studying data from individual reports submitted to the Syrian Network for Human Rights, they described Syria as “the most dangerous place in the world to be a healthcare provider”, where “no cadre of health worker or health facility is immune to the attacks”.
“The intentional, highly destructive and repetitive targeting of ambulances throughout the Syrian conflict has had an immeasurable and devastating impact on the people of Syria and the healthcare system,” the researchers added in the paper, titled “Ambulances under siege in Syria”.
They further noted that most of the attacks occurred in areas held by rebel forces, such as Aleppo, Idlib and Damascus. Only 1-2 per cent took place in pro-government areas.
The deliberate targeting of healthcare facilities has been a constant theme of Syria’s civil war. Even when coordinates of healthcare facilities have been provided to all relevant parties, they have been destroyed or targeted in attacks. As a result, most hospitals in rebel-held areas were forced to moved underground to avoid being targeted, and their locations kept secret.
Source: The Independent.