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Ammon News - AMMONNEWS - The Syrian ambassador in Moscow said Monday in an interview with Rossiya 24 television that U.S. planes were behind air strikes on a hospital operated by Doctors Without Borders in Syria, which Washington also condemned and blamed Damascus and its allies as culprits.

“It was destroyed by the American Air Force. The Russian Air Force has nothing to do it with,” said Ambassador Riad Haddad.

Haddad said Damascus hoped peace talks would resume on Feb. 25 but that Turkey was interfering in the country to support Islamic State militants.

Meanwhile, the State Department said “the Assad regime and its supporters would continue these attacks, without cause and without sufficient regard for international obligations to safeguard innocent lives, flies in the face of the unanimous calls by the ISSG, including in Munich, to avoid attacks on civilians and casts doubt on Russia’s willingness and/or ability to help bring to a stop the continued brutality of the Assad regime against its own people.”

Missiles hit a hospital in the town of Marat Numan in Idlib province, in north western Syria, said the French president of the Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) charity, which was supporting the hospital.

“There were at least seven deaths among the personnel and the patients, and at least eight MSF personnel have disappeared, and we don’t know if they are alive,” Mego Terzian told Reuters on Monday.

“The author of the strike is clearly ... either the government or Russia,” he said, adding that it was not the first time MSF facilities in Syria had been attacked.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which tracks violence across the country, said one male nurse was killed and five female nurses, a doctor and one male nurse are believed to be under the rubble in the MSF hospital.

Also in Marat Numan, another strike hit the National Hospital on the north edge of town, killing two nurses, the Observatory said.

While Haddad accused the U.S., residents in two towns where hospitals were attacked blamed Russian strikes, saying the planes deployed were more numerous and the munitions more powerful than the Syrian military typically used.

Rescue workers and rights groups say Russian bombing has killed scores of civilians at market places, hospitals, schools and residential areas in Syria. Western countries also say Russia has been attacking mostly Western-backed insurgent groups.

But Moscow has said it is targeting “terrorist groups” and dismissed any suggestion it has killed civilians since beginning its air campaign in support of President Bashar al-Assad’s forces in September.

Meanwhile, 14 people were killed in the town of Azaz near the Turkish border when missiles slammed into a school sheltering families fleeing the offensive and the children’s hospital, two residents and a medic said.

Bombs also hit another refugee shelter south of the town and a convoy of trucks, another resident said.

“We have been moving scores of screaming children from the hospital,” said medic Juma Rahal. At least two children were killed and scores of people injured, he said.

Activists posted video online purporting to the damaged hospital. Three crying babies lay in incubators in a ward littered with broken medical equipment. Reuters could not independently verify the video.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Monday also voiced alarm at reports of deadly attacks on Syrian schools and hospitals, including the MSF medical center, a U.N. spokesman said.

“The secretary-general is deeply concerned by reports of missile attacks on at least five medical facilities and two schools in Aleppo and in Idlib, which killed close to 50 civilians, including children, and injuring many,” said U.N. spokesman Farhan Haq.

*Agencies