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A small band of doctors continues to work in rebel-held Syria, the most bombed patch of territory in the world, where hospitals and doctors’ clinics are specifically targeted for attack

In the early hours of 3 October, rockets slammed into a Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, killing at least 14 health workers and injuring 37. An MSF clinic in the southern Yemen city of Taiz was bombed on 2 December, injuring 9 people, including 2 MSF staff. Since 2012, almost 60% of hospitals in Syria have been partially or completely destroyed, and more than half of the country’s health workers have fled or been killed.

A military coalition led by Saudi Arabia that bombed a Doctors Without Borders clinic in Yemen on Wednesday had regularly been provided with the coordinates of the clinic, the medical charity said in a statement on Thursday.

In July 2015, a 26-year-old pediatrician described to our team of Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) investigators his experiences in Aleppo, Syria's most populous city. When he was a medical student in 2012, government forces detained and severely beat him. He now works as an emergency medicine physician and surgery resident in a hospital that has twice been bombed by the Syrian government. He lives in fear of being killed by bombs on his way to work or while there. His family wants him to leave Syria as they did, but he explained, “It's our country, and if we leave, it will fall apart. At times, I think maybe I will leave and specialize and come back with better skills, but then I see how much the people need me. Maybe that's the biggest thing that's keeping me inside.”

In a report released Wednesday, the group, Physicians for Human Rights, chronicled 45 attacks on medical facilities in Aleppo since 2012, mostly by Syrian government forces.