Airstrikes target hospitals in Syria's Idlib province

Several hospitals in the rebel-held Syrian province of Idlib were targeted in airstrikes on Tuesday, local activist media and a monitoring group said.

There were conflicting accounts of how many hospitals came under attack or how many people died.

Activist group Idlib Media Center said strikes knocked out service at Al-Rahma Hospital in the town of Khan Sheikhoun, Orient Hospital in Kafr Nabl and an obstetrics hospital in Al-Tah village, and that three nurses were killed in another hospital in Al-Tah, which remained operational.

But Mustafa al-Haj Yusuf, director of the Idlib branch of the Syria Civil Defense, better known as the White Helmets, told CNN that one nurse was killed in airstrikes on three hospitals. Two of the group's headquarters and a team in the field were also hit, Yusuf added.

Tuesday marked the first deadly airstrikes in Idlib in months, according to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

It wasn't immediately clear who conducted the strikes, though only Russian and Syrian regime aircraft have been bombing those areas of Idlib province.

Al-Rahma Hospital was previously targeted in April, as it received casualties from a deadly chemical-weapons attack on Khan Sheikhoun.

Syrian investigator quits

The attacks come one day after the Independent Commission of Inquiry on Syria presented its latest report on the civil war to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.

The commission stated that, despite tenuous progress on de-escalation in some parts of Syria, civilians continue to suffer from wide-ranging human-rights violations and abuse.

"Many of those displaced from areas previously besieged by pro-government forces are now in Idlib, where they face difficulties accessing humanitarian assistance," Paulo Pinheiro, chairman of the inquiry, said in a statement.

Pinheiro is one of only two remaining commissioners on the inquiry, after veteran prosecutor Carla del Ponte resigned from the investigation on Monday.

Before quitting the council, del Ponte told Syria's ambassador she had been right to believe that Assad's government was responsible for the chemical attack on Khan Sheikhoun.

"I said that in my opinion and based on the elements we already had, the Syrian government was responsible. Today we have the confirmation after an official commission's inquiry. So now, we ask for justice, we ask justice for those victims," del Ponte said, according to Reuters.