While the area is nominally protected by a Russian-Turkish deal agreed in September to avert a new battle, Bashar Assad's militias - backed by Russians - have launched an offensive on the major insurgent stronghold. Some three million civilians are at risk, the United Nations said.
"Since we know that Russia and Syria (Assad regime) are the only countries that fly planes in the area, is the answer ... the Russian and Syrian (Assad) air forces?" Britain's UN Ambassador Karen Pierce said to the 15-member council on where the blame lay.
Acting US Ambassador to the United Nations Jonathan Cohen said Russia and Assad regime were responsible for the attacks on the health centers. He said it was "most alarming" that several of the centers attacked were on a list created by Russia and the United Nations in an attempt to protect them.
Pierce said it would be "absolutely grotesque" if health facilities that provided their locations were "finding themselves being the authors of their own destruction because of deliberate targeting by the regime."
Russian UN Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said the Assad and Russian forces were not targeting civilians or civilian infrastructure and questioned the sources used by the United Nations to verify attacks on health centers.
UN aid chief Mark Lowcock told the Security Council he did not know who was responsible, but "at least some of these attacks are clearly organized by people with access to sophisticated weapons including a modern air force and so called smart or precision weapons."
Lowcock said 49 health centers had partially or totally suspended activities, some for fear of being attacked, while 17 schools have been damaged or destroyed and many more closed. He said that in the past three weeks up to 160 people have been killed and at least 180,000 people displaced.
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