UNITED NATIONS, May 5. /TASS/. The United Nations keeps on insisting Al-Quds hospital in Syria’s Aleppo was a target of an air strike on April 27, despite Russia’s evidence denying the very instance of bombardment.
Apart from that, at the United Nations Security Council meeting on Wednesday, Stephen O’Brien, the UN Emergency Relief Coordinator, presented updated data on death toll from the air strike and once again put the blame for in on Damascus.
"On 27 April, Al-Quds hospital - the most advanced paediatric care center in Aleppo - let me repeat, a hospital dedicated to treating children - was destroyed after being hit by a wave of airstrikes, which by all accounts were launched by the Government of Syria. Fifty people were killed, including several doctors, and eighty more people were injured," he said.
Earlier, the United States said the alleged air strike claimed 20 lives.
Meanwhile, the Russian Defense Ministry on Wednesday denied the very instance of an air strike against Al-Quds on April 27, because the building, according to Russian military, had been ruined back last year.
The humanitarian organization Doctors without Borders claims that the hospital was destroyed in a recent air raid.
Earlier, the Russian Defense Ministry said that Russian planes flew no sorties in the area of Aleppo on that day, while a plane belonging to one of the countries of the so-called "anti-Islamic State coalition" appeared in the sky over the city for the first time after a long interval.
"The pseudo-sensational report of a bombing raid against the Al-Quds hospital has been replicated by many international mass media as an example of breach of the Russian-US agreement on a ceasefire in Syria," Russian Defense Ministry Spokesman Igor Konashenkov said.
At a Defense Ministry briefing, Konashenkov presented two photographs. One, made by a Russian drone on April 29, "clearly shows the degree of the hospital’s destruction."
"This is irrefutable evidence and nobody denies it," he said.
The other image, taken by space reconnaissance means, indicates the very same damage, Konashenkov said, adding that the latter photo was made on October 15, 2015.
"The presented photographs indicate quite clearly that all ostensible "eyewitness accounts" about an air strike against the hospital are in fact another falsehood.
"More comments would be redundant," Konashenkov said.
The spokesman for the UN Secretary-General, Stephane Dujarric, earlier said an air strike on April 27 left 20 dead. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon blamed the attack on the Syrian military, who earlier disclaimed responsibility for the strike.
O’Brien told the United Nations Security Council that there were over 360 documented attacks on some 250 medical facilities during the course of the conflict. "More than 730 medical personnel have been killed," he said. More to it, Samantha Power, the US Permanent Representative to the United Nations, said that Syrian government forces were to blame for 12 out of 13 recent air strikes at hospitals.