A UN official has condemned air raids that targeted hospitals in Syrian opposition-held areas this month, saying the facilities were serving hundreds of thousands of people.
Jan Egeland, a top UN aid official for Syria, said the UN does not know who carried out the air raids in the northwestern Idlib province.
Egeland told reporters in Geneva the air raids in mid-September are "very much associated" with attacks by Al-Qaeda-linked militants earlier this month on Syrian and Russian troops in the central Hama province bordering Idlib.
He said government and Russian forces, as well as the US-led coalition striking Daesh, need "to do more to avoid indiscriminate attacks against civilian targets." Egeland said "the five or more hospitals" that were hit in Idlib were serving 500,000 civilians.
Meanwhile, the leader of Daesh urged followers to burn their enemies everywhere and target “media centers of the infidels,” according to an audio recording released Thursday that the extremists said was by Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi.
The reclusive leader of Daesh, who has only appeared in public once, also vowed to continue fighting and lavished praise on terrorists despite their loss of the northern Iraqi city of Mosul in July.
The recording was released by the Daesh-run Al-Furqan outlet, which has in the past released messages from Al-Baghdadi. The voice in the over 46-minute-long audio sounded much like previous recordings of Al-Baghdadi.