Four medical workers have been killed and a nurse critically injured in an airstrike that hit a clinic in a village near the Syrian city of Aleppo, the aid group that supports the clinic has said.

The medics, who worked for the Union of Syrian Medical Relief Organisations (UOSSM), were in two ambulances that had been called to the clinic to take some patients for more specialised treatment, the group said.

The clinic in the village of Khan Touman was completely levelled in the strike and more dead were feared to be buried under the rubble, the group added.

“The building has three floors, including a basement. Because of the intensity of the bombardment, the three storeys collapsed and are completely destroyed,” the group’s hospitals and trauma director for the area, Ahmed Dbais, said in a statement. “We don’t yet know exactly how many dead there are.”

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said Syrian or Russian warplanes carried out the raid and that it also killed nine rebel fighters from the Islamist alliance Jaish al-Fatah.

Khan Tuman is near Urem al-Kubra, the town where an attack on aid trucks and a warehouse killed about 20 civilians on Monday, as a week-old ceasefire brokered by Russia and the US collapsed. US defence officials believe Russian planes dropped the bombs. The Russian foreign ministry has rejected the allegations with “resentment and indignation”.

The UN security council is due to meet later on Wednesday for talks on salvaging the truce, but the mood was likely to be tense after the US accusations over the aid convoy strike.

The US secretary of state John Kerry and Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov are both to address the council, ahead of more talks expected later this week.

Russia and the US co-sponsored the ceasefire plan, with Kerry warning it could be the “last chance” to try to end Syria’s civil war, which has killed more than 300,000 people in five years. Speaking on Tuesday after a short meeting of the 23-nation International Syria Support Group in New York, where world leaders have gathered for the UN general assembly, Kerry insisted that efforts to salvage the truce were “not dead”.

Kerry’s spokesman John Kirby said it had been agreed that “despite continued violence” diplomats would use the agreement between the United States and Russia as a basis for more talks.



In Aleppo, a key battleground in the conflict, opposition-held districts and the city’s outskirts were pummelled by bombardments into Wednesday morning. The SOHR said dozens of raids hit the city’s east overnight, as regime troops advanced on rebels in Aleppo’s south-western outskirts.

According to the World Heath Organisation, Syria is the most dangerous country in the world for health professionals, with 135 strikes on clinics and hospitals last year.

The head of UOSSM France, Dr Ziad Alissa, condemned the “unacceptable” attack on the group’s clinic and staff. “Deliberately targeting humanitarian workers and medical professionals is a clear violation of international humanitarian law,” he said. “We appeal to the international community to act swiftly to put a stop to these atrocities. Too many lives have been lost.”

The UOSSM is a medical aid group originally founded by Syrian expatriates that is now international.