At least 50 dead in hospital and school missile strike

About 50 civilians were killed when missiles hit five medical centers and two schools in rebel-held Syrian towns on Monday, the United Nations and residents said.

The carnage occurred as Russian-backed Syrian troops intensified their push toward the rebel stronghold of Aleppo.

Fourteen people were killed in the town of Azaz near the Turkish border when missiles slammed into a school sheltering families fleeing the offensive and a children's hospital, two residents and a medic said.

Bombs also hit another refugee shelter south of the town and a convoy of trucks, another resident said. "We have been moving scores of screaming children from the hospital," medic Juma Rahal said.

At least two children were killed and scores of people injured, he said.
Activists posted video online purporting to show the damaged hospital.

Three crying babies lay in incubators in a ward littered with broken medical equipment. Reuters could not independently verify the video.
In a separate incident, missiles hit another hospital in the town of Marat Numan in Idlib province, in northwestern Syria, said the French president of the Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) charity, which was supporting the hospital. "There were at least seven deaths among the personnel and the patients, and at least eight MSF personnel have disappeared, and we don't know if they are alive," Mego Terzian told Reuters.

"The author of the strike is clearly...either the government or Russia," he said, adding that it was not the first time MSF facilities in Syria had been attacked.