Hospitals in opposition-held parts of Syria are refusing to share GPS coordinates with Russian and Syrian authorities because of repeated attacks on medical facilities and workers, Médecins Sans Frontières and humanitarian workers on the ground have said.
International charity MSF said it took the decision not to formally inform Syria’s government or its Russian allies about the location of some medical facilities, such as the one hit by a deadly airstrike this week, amid concerns that doing so could make them targets.
Joanne Liu, MSF International president, told reporters in Geneva that deliberate attacks on civilian infrastructures were routine. “Healthcare in Syria is in the crosshair of bombs and missiles. It has collapsed,” Liu said. “Let me be clear: attacks on civilians and hospitals must stop. The normalisation of such attacks is intolerable.”
Humanitarian officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the Guardian that the Syrian government has explicitly threatened to bomb a hospital in a besieged suburb of Damascus if it continues to admit emergency cases, and said doctors and families were targeted by the regime.
“Since 2011 during the demonstration time, medical activities that are not under their control are considered by the government of Syria as illegal and consequently as legitimate targets,” one official said. “This decision explains the repeated threat, arrest, torture and killing of doctors … and their direct families in addition to the systematic targeting of networks in charge of supplying underground medical activities in besieged zones.”
“Given the number of hospitals that have been bombed since the war started, they do not think [giving GPS coordinates] is going to protect them, rather the opposite,” another official said.
Earlier this week, airstrikes hit an MSF-supported hospital in northern Syria, killing 11 people. Another hospital in the rebel-held town of Azaz was destroyed by what Turkey said was a ballistic missile fired by Russia.
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