An RT team witnessed harrowing pictures as it visited the hospital in Syria, where wounded and the bodies of victims were taken after the fatal shelling of western Aleppo by the terrorists on Friday.
"Some of the things we saw were heart-wrenching even by Aleppo standards," RT's Murad Gazdiev reported from the Syrian city, which remains divided between the government forces and the militants.
"One man, injured by shrapnel himself, was hunkered down, rocking back and forth, clutching his two-year-old son, who had been killed and was wrapped in blankets," he said.
"We saw four children huddled and crying over the corpse of their mother. There was screaming and shouting in the corridors," added Gazdiev.
He said the medical facilities in the city were quickly flooded by the victims and the Aleppo University Hospital was so crowded, it was hard for RT's crew to move about.
"Paramedics rushed the new arrivals to emergency room where they had to wait for the doctors to finish with patients already there," Gazdiev said.
Six civilians, including a two-year-old child, were killed and 75 were injured in the shelling of the Bustan al-Qasr neighborhood.
"Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaeda's affiliate in Syria, launched a major attack against the Syrian army just after midnight, in an apparent attempt to link up with Islamists outside the city," Gazdiev said.
"The walls, the windows, the floor of the hotel where we were staying at, shook for hours and hours" as the terrorists threw everything they had at the Syrian government forces, he added. "There was the unmistakable scream of rocket artillery, mortar round explosions, the much heavier blasts caused by gas canister bombs."
The militants "used the moratorium on Russian and Syrian combat flights" and attempted to break out of eastern Aleppo, the Chief of Operations at the Russian General Staff, Lieutenant-General Sergey Rudskoy, said Friday.
The attack was carried out with support of 20 tanks and 15 armored personnel carriers (APC) , accompanied by heavy fire from rocket launchers and artillery. The offensive was repelled by the Syrian forces, with the terrorists losing six tanks and five APCs, Rudskoy said.
Comment: Update (Oct. 29): Three were killed and 40 injured today, the second day of the terrorists attack on western Aleppo:
According to Gazdiev, militants and jihadists "have been trying to seemingly blow their way into the city using whatever armaments they have, the heaviest of them actually rockets, missiles, homemade bombs packed with nails. It has been relentless, blanket bombardment of the city and civilians are paying a terrible price."
As of midday local time, three people died in the militant assaults, while some 40 more were injured. An RT crew visited a hospital in the government-controlled area, which treated those injured in the devastating shelling.
"I was heading back on my bicycle when a shell landed next to me," a 12-year-old boy who was injured told RT. A young girl said that her father died in the explosion. "That's it, he is gone! Please save us from them," she said.
An official at Aleppo's central hospital
told RIA Novosti that a total of at least 15 people were killed and 150 wounded after terrorist shelling of residential areas, presumably in the last day. Over the past three days, the Russian MOD
says 43 civilians were killed from 62 mortar and "Helfire" canon attacks, and 96 wounded.
See also this report from RT's Murad Gazdiev:
War crime: U.S.-backed terrorists kill 6 civilians, 71 wounded in Aleppo
Comment: Update (Oct. 29): Three were killed and 40 injured today, the second day of the terrorists attack on western Aleppo:
An official at Aleppo's central hospital told RIA Novosti that a total of at least 15 people were killed and 150 wounded after terrorist shelling of residential areas, presumably in the last day. Over the past three days, the Russian MOD says 43 civilians were killed from 62 mortar and "Helfire" canon attacks, and 96 wounded.
See also this report from RT's Murad Gazdiev: War crime: U.S.-backed terrorists kill 6 civilians, 71 wounded in Aleppo