The six-member Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) yesterday demanded that the UN intervene in Syria to stop aerial bombardments of the city of Aleppo that were killing hundreds of civilians.
The GCC, representing Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait and Oman - said a Syrian government offensive on the city was systematically destroying neighbourhoods and a “flagrant aggression contrary to international laws”.
“The secretary-general... demands that the UN Security Council intervene immediately to stop the aggression on the city of Aleppo and end the suffering of the Syrian people,” the GCC said in a statement.
It called on the United Nations to “implement relevant council resolutions over the Syria crisis”.
The largest hospital in rebel-held east Aleppo was bombed yesterday for the second time in days as Syrian regime forces continued its relentless attacks.
Recent attacks by regime forces have seen dozens of civilians killed and residential buildings flattened in the east, where an estimated 250,000 people live under government siege.
Diplomatic efforts to end the fighting across the country have all but collapsed.
The foreign ministers of the United States and Russia, which brokered a week-long truce deal that collapsed last month, spoke by phone yesterday.
The foreign ministry in Moscow said on Facebook that Sergei Lavrov spoke to his American counterpart John Kerry and they “examined the situation in Syria, including the possibility of normalising the situation around Aleppo”.
As the situation for civilians in Aleppo grows increasingly dire, the largest hospital in the east of the city was hit by barrel bombs yesterday, the medical organisation that supports it said.
“Two barrel bombs hit the M10 hospital and there were reports of a cluster bomb as well,” said Adham Sahloul of the Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS). Sahloul said a small group of patients and doctors “were inside the hospital for basic triage, bandaging, and cleaning services for emergency cases” when the bombardment began.
 SAMS radiologist and hospital administrator Mohamed Abu Rajab made an urgent call for help from inside M10.
“The hospital is being destroyed! SOS, everyone!” he said in an audio message distributed to journalists.
M10 had already been hit on Wednesday along with the second-largest hospital in the area, M2.
That bombardment badly damaged the two facilities and left only six fully-functional hospitals in east Aleppo, according to SAMS.
At the bombed hospital, an AFP journalist saw bloodstained hospital beds and dented equipment lying in disarray beneath blown-out windows.
“A new barrel bomb fell this afternoon in front of the hospital, forcing medical staff... to evacuate all patients to another one and leave the hospital,” a doctor at M10 told AFP.
European Parliament president Martin Schulz called the hospital bombing a “war crime”, tweeting that the international community “must unite to prevent city annihilation”.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said “the systematic targeting of structures and health workers is particularly unjustifiable”.
Since fighting first broke out there in 2012, Aleppo has been divided by a front line between rebel forces in the east and government troops in the west.
After the government launched its offensive last month, more than 220 people have been killed by bombardment on Aleppo’s east, including six children and 12 other civilians on Friday, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.