"The hospitals and the health workers are the first line of targets," said Ahmad, a health worker for Médecins Sans Frontières, who risks death each time he enters Syria.
Provided to BuzzFeed News
Ahmad Almohammad is no stranger to falling bombs. The 26-year-old works in hospitals in Syria with Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF, aka Doctors Without Borders) and has often been inside buildings that have come under attack. Like the time two years ago in Fafeen, just north of Aleppo, when the sound of an approaching helicopter warned him and his colleagues that they had just seconds to decide which way to run before the barrel bombs start dropping.
Almohammad described the horror of that day in a phone interview from Turkey, where he lives with his mother and siblings. "We all had to guess where the barrels from the helicopter would drop," he told BuzzFeed News. "All the staff and patients started to run, but we had no idea where to go. We could hear the noise above, we all thought the helicopter was directly over our head. It was all down to chance on whether we'd be hit. In those few seconds, it felt like my last moments."
Almohammad said he knew from past attacks that the helicopter would drop five barrels. One by one, a barrel dropped. After the fifth fell, they waited briefly before running back inside to see what and who had managed to survive. Little was left of the hospital.
"I know we are targets," Almohammad said. "I went into this knowing that I would be. The hospitals and the health workers are the first line of targets because we are trying to keep people alive."
The Ma’arat Al Numan hospital before and after it was destroyed on Monday 15 February.
Provided to BuzzFeed News
The systematic targeting of medical facilities has been a constant feature of Syria's devastating civil war. In a report released by MSF last week, the charity said 63 MSF‐supported facilities were hit by aerial and shelling attacks in 2015, and in 12 cases, the attacks caused the total destruction of the facility. A total of 81 MSF‐supported medical staff were killed or wounded in the year. Women and children made up 30-40% of casualties recorded in its facilities in 2015, the charity said, proving civilian areas are consistently being hit.
Health charities on the ground have routinely described attacks on hospitals as war crimes and violations of international law that have become so commonplace they've become "normalised".
But Almohammad told BuzzFeed News that it is a series of attacks on MSF facilities since the beginning of the year in particular that has seriously shaken health workers. Last week, airstrikes killed 25 people at Marat Al Numan, an MSF-backed hospital in northern Syria. MSF has since called for an independent investigation into the strikes and said the attack was probably carried out by Syrian and Russian forces.
"Before, we were just very angry at the regime," Almohammad said. "Now my colleagues say that we are a very cheap target. In the media, we are just a mention, just another hospital targeted, and that's it. Nothing else. No one is moving to protect us – we have nobody to protect the health workers. If we ever leave Syria, we are escaping from our duties to help these people, and my duties towards my people."
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