© AFP 2016/ GEORGE OURFALIANSyrian pro-government forces patrol Aleppo's Sheikh Saeed, on December 12, 2016, after troops retook the area from rebel fighters
he said.
Konashenkov noted that, according to locals, there were only hunger and total terror exerted by militants as punishment for any attempts to express discontent or leave the enclave.
Russian combat engineers "have not found a single operational hospital or school that had been used in militant-held areas for their designated purposes," he added.
Instead, those facilities were used as staffs, Sharia courts, ammo depots, production facilities for making improvised rockets, he said.
Over the past three weeks, the Syrian army and militias
have freed more than 98 percent of the territory of eastern Aleppo, which had been held by terrorists since 2012, and
have liberated over 100,000 residents of the city.
Comment: The Russian Defense Ministry's spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov has
refuted allegations of "250,000 trapped" Aleppo civilians.
"The Syrian troops' operation to liberate the eastern parts of Aleppo, successful and humane in every sense in regard to civilians... showed a number of important things... All of the dramatized outcries, allegedly in defense of the '250,000 trapped' Aleppo civilians, especially those which are loudly voiced by representatives of Britain and France, are nothing more than russophobic chatter," he said.
Konashenkov underscored that terrorists had held more than 100,000 civilians as human shields in Eastern Aleppo. The civilinas have already left the embattled city.
"All of them left the enclave at the first opportunity and entered government-controlled areas for the sake of security, real aid and food," he added.
Comment: The Russian Defense Ministry's spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov has refuted allegations of "250,000 trapped" Aleppo civilians.