Attacks

She had lost too much blood. Four bullets had ripped through her. A surgery was under way and they could not use anaesthesia. Salma Jaffar, the sole survivor of an attack on a polio immunisation team in Qayyumabad, vividly remembers the searing pain as the doctors cut and sewed her up. For 22 days she stayed in the intensive care unit wondering who would pay her medical expenses. The health department owes her two months’ salary and the meagre stipend for vaccination, Rs250 a day, has also not been paid since August.

Aid worker attacks and attacks against civilian aid operations were at their highest levels last year, said Abby Stoddard, senior program adviser for humanitarian action at New York University’s Center on International Cooperation and a partner with Humanitarian Outcomes, an independent research group. Preliminary numbers show 172 major attacks on aid workers in 2013; the previous peak year was 2008, when there were 165 attacks.

Attacks on Syria's medical community and infrastructure have devastated the health-care system. Government forces – and sometimes opposition groups – have deliberately targeted medical professionals, hospitals, ambulances, and supplies, preventing untold numbers of people from getting medical care and stopping medical professionals from providing services when they are critically needed.

BEIRUT: An unprecedented aerial bombardment of Aleppo by the Syrian government has sent thousands of people fleeing in recent weeks and exacerbated an already dire humanitarian situation in the city. Some of the most intense bombing came during the Geneva II peace talks between the Assad regime and the opposition-in-exile which began in late January, with 800 people dying in the first week of the discussions alone.

Suspected armed Islamic militants Wednesday ambushed a convoy carrying doctors near the Somalian capital, killing six people, three of them Syrian doctors in the country giving medical assistance, officials said Wednesday. Capt. Mohamed Hussein, a senior Somalian police commander, said the convoy came under attack in a semi-forested area outside Mogadishu, while on the way to give medical help to patients at a hospital.