(The Economist) – On A wintry morning in February warplanes supporting Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad launched a series of missiles that slammed into a field hospital in northern Syria. Medics raced towards the thick cloud of grey dust that mushroomed above the building, before clambering over breeze blocks and fallen trees to pull the wounded from the rubble. About 40 minutes later, the jets—either Russian or Syrian, no one is sure—circled back and dropped another bomb on the medics as they worked. The air strikes killed 25 civilians, including eight medical workers, making it the single deadliest attack on medical personnel since the war in Syria began in 2011. Unsatisfied with the death toll, the jets tracked the ambulances carrying the wounded to another field hospital three miles north. They hit the hospital entrance with another missile and then, ten minutes later, dropped yet another bomb. “There’s no way on that day they didn’t know what they were doing,” says Ahmed Tarakji, president of the Syrian American Medical Society, which financed the second hospital hit that day.
