BEIRUT -- Russia warned the United States on Saturday against carrying out any attacks on Syrian government forces, saying it would have repercussions across the Middle East, as government forces captured a hill on the edge of the northern city of Aleppo under the cover of airstrikes.
Russian news agencies quoted Foreign Ministry spokesman Maria Zakharova as saying that a U.S. intervention against the Syrian army "will lead to terrible, tectonic consequences not only on the territory of this country but also in the region on the whole."
She said regime change in Syria would create a vacuum that would be "quickly filled" by "terrorists of all stripes."
U.S.-Russia tensions over Syria have escalated since the breakdown of a cease-fire last month, with each side blaming the other for its failure. Syrian government forces backed by Russian warplanes have launched an onslaught on rebel-held parts of Aleppo.
Syrian troops pushed ahead in their offensive in Aleppo on Saturday, capturing the strategic Um al-Shuqeef hill near the Palestinian refugee camp of Handarat that government forces captured from rebels last week, according to state TV. The hill is on the northern edge of Aleppo, which was once Syria's largest city and commercial center.
The powerful, ultraconservative Ahrar al-Sham militant group said rebels regained control Saturday of several positions they lost in Aleppo in the Bustan al-Basha neighborhood.
State media said 13 people were wounded when rebels shelled the central government-held neighborhood of Midan.
Airstrikes on Aleppo struck a hospital in the eastern, rebel-held neighborhood of Sakhour, putting it out of service, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the Local Coordination Committees. The groups said one person was killed in the airstrike.
Opposition activist Ahmad Alkhatib described the hospital, known as M10, as one of the largest in Aleppo. He posted photographs on his Twitter account showing the damage, including beds covered with dust, a hole in the hospital's roof and debris covering the street outside.
A doctor at the hospital told the Aleppo Media Center, an activist collective, that thousands of people were treated in the compound in the past, adding that two people were killed in Saturday's airstrikes and several were wounded.
"A real catastrophe will hit medical institutions in Aleppo if the direct shelling continues to target hospitals and clinics," said the doctor, whose name was not given. He said the hospital is out of service.
Opposition activists have blamed President Bashar Assad's forces and Russia for airstrikes that hit Syria Civil Defense units and clinics in the city where eastern rebel-held neighborhoods are besieged by government forces and pro-government militiamen.
On Friday, the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders demanded that the Syrian government and its allies "halt the indiscriminate bombing that has killed and wounded hundreds of civilians--many of them children," over the past week in Aleppo.
"Bombs are raining from Syria-led coalition planes and the whole of east Aleppo has become a giant kill box," said Xisco Villalonga, director of operations for the group. "The Syrian government must stop the indiscriminate bombing, and Russia as an indispensable political and military ally of Syria has the responsibility to exert the pressure to stop this."
The group said that from Sept. 21 to Monday, hospitals still functioning in Aleppo reported receiving more than 822 wounded, including at least 221 children, and more than 278 bodies -- including 96 children -- according to the Directorate of Health in east Aleppo.
Sweden's Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom took to Twitter to criticize attacks on civilian targets: "Unacceptable to bomb civilians, children and hospitals in #Aleppo. No humanity. Assad & Russia moving further away from peace."
In the eastern province of Deir el-Zour, warplanes of the U.S.-led coalition destroyed several bridges on the Euphrates River, according to Syrian Arab News Agency and Deir el-Zour 24, an activist media collective. The province is a stronghold of the Islamic State militant group.
State TV said that among the bridges destroyed was the Tarif Bridge, which links the eastern city of Deir el-Zour with the northern Syrian city of Raqqa, the extremists' de-facto capital.
Also Saturday, Turkey's state-run news agency said parliament has extended by another year a motion allowing cross-border military operations into Syria and Iraq against Kurdish militants and the Islamic State.
The resolution, first passed in 2014, was renewed Saturday, the first and only item on the parliament's agenda on the first day of the new legislative year. The state-run Anadolu Agency said it will remain in force until Oct. 30, 2017.
The pro-Kurdish People's Democracy Party voted against the bill, while the other three parties in parliament approved it.
Turkey sent troops and tanks into Syria in August to help Syrian opposition rebels retake Islamic State strongholds near the border and curb the advance of Syrian Kurdish militia, which are affiliated with Turkey's outlawed Kurdish rebels.
In Jordan, meanwhile, Syrian refugees stranded on the border protested over their refusal to move about 3.7 miles west to a soon-to-be-opened aid distribution center.
Videos sent to The Associated Press on Saturday showed a protest against any relocation from the al-Rukban camp.
"If we move from the Jordanian border, there will be no safety. Syrian and Russian planes will come and bomb us," said Ahmad, a 40-year-old Syrian living at the 75,000-person camp who wouldn't provide his full name for safety concerns.
Aid officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said a new distribution point is being built to draw refugees away from a nearby Jordanian military base. The officials added that the U.N. and Jordan will agree this week to start remote delivery of food, water and basic medical care from a service center constructed recently inside Jordan.
That could encourage the refugees to voluntarily move to the new distribution center or force them to transport supplies from it back to al-Rukban, the aid officials said.
Information for this article was contributed by Nataliya Vasilyeva, Albert Aji, Jan M. Olsen, Sam McNeil and by staff members of The Associated Press.
A Section on 10/02/2016