‘We
were living in security and peace. These areas are being targeted,
they want to force us to leave. Every Syrian is being targeted,’
one Syrian religious leader told a delegation of reporters who
visited Aleppo earlier this month.
by
Eva Bartlett
Part
4 - 18 killed in Nov. 3 terror attacks
On the
afternoon of Nov. 3, after meeting with Dr. Mohammed Batikh, director
of Al-Razi Hospital, the victims of terror attacks which had begun a
few hours prior began to arrive one after another, maimed and
critically injured. The vehicle bombings and bombardment of Grad
missiles, among other attacks, left 18 people dead and more than 200
injured, according to Dr. Zaher Hajo, the head of forensic medicine
at Al-Razi Hospital.
The
corridors and emergency ward at Al-Razi Hospital, one of two
state-run hospitals in Aleppo, quickly became clogged with the
injured and grieving family members. In one crowded interior
corridor, one of the wounded screamed out in pain: “Ya, Allah! Ya,
Allah!”
In another
corridor, a 15-year-old boy with a cast on one leg and bandages on
his head, said the mortar attack which injured him had killed his
4-year-old cousin and left his 6-year-old cousin with critical
injuries.
In a front
room, a mother wailed for her son who had suffered severe injuries.
She screamed and pleaded for someone to save him, her only son. Not
long after, though, the news came in: the 26-year-old had died. Her
son, a doctor, was not the first medical professional to die in
terrorists’ routine bombings of Aleppo neighborhoods.
Dr. Nabil
Antaki, a gastroenterologist from Aleppo, with whom I met on my trips
to Aleppo in July and August, messaged me in October about his friend
and colleague, Dr. Omar, who was injured on Oct. 6 when terrorist
factions unleashed an attack on Jamiliye Street, killing 10 people.
Just a few days after the attack, Dr. Omar, too, died.
At the
morgue behind Al-Razi Hospital on Nov. 3, inconsolable family members
leaned against the wall or sat on the pavement, coming to grips with
the deaths of loved ones.
One
14-year-old boy had been there on Nov. 2, when his father was killed.
On Nov. 3, he returned when his mother was killed. Both of this boy’s
parents are dead, both killed in terrorist attacks on the city’s
New Aleppo district.
A man spoke
of a 10-year-old nephew who was shot in the head by a terrorist
sniper while the boy was on his roof.
A woman and
her children leaned against an iron rail next to the door to the
morgue, weeping over the death of her husband, their father, who was
killed while parking a car. When the man’s mother arrived, she
collapsed, shrieking in grief.
And in the
midst of all of this, all these women and children, a car arrived at
the morgue with the body of yet another victim of the day’s terror
attacks, Mohammed Majd Darwish, 74. His upper body was so bloody that
it was unclear whether he had been decapitated.
Near the
morgue, Bashir Shehadeh, a man in his forties, said his family had
been displaced already from Jisr al-Shughour, a city in Idlib. His
mother, some of his friends, and his cousin have been killed by
terrorist factions’ shellings. He said enough was enough, and
called on the SAA to eliminate the terrorist threat.
Al-Razi’s
Dr. Batikh said a private hospital, Al-Rajaa, was hit by a mortar
attack. “They cannot do operations now, the operating room is
out of service.”
One of the
most notable attacks on hospitals was the December 2013 double truck
bombing of Al-Kindi Hospital, the largest and best cancer treatment
hospital in the Middle East. I have previously reported on other
attacks on hospitals in Aleppo, including the May 3 rocket attack
which gutted Al-Dabeet, a maternity hospital, killing three women. On
Sept. 10, Dr. Antaki messaged me:
“Yesterday,
a rocket, sent by the terrorists, hit a maternity hospital in Aleppo
in Muhafazat Street. Two persons working in the hospital were
injured. No death. But the point is that it is a hospital and it was
hit by a rocket.”
Dr. Batikh
and Dr. Mazen Rahmoun, deputy director of Al-Razi, said the hospital
once had 68 ambulances, but now there are only six. The rest, they
said, were either stolen by terrorist factions or destroyed.
Aleppo’s
doctors continue to treat the daily influx of injured and ill
patients in spite of the dearth of ambulances and effects of Western
sanctions which mean a lack of medical equipment, replacement parts,
and medicine for critical illnesses like cancer.
According to
the hospital’s head forensic medicine, Dr. Hajo, in the last five
years, 10,750 civilians have been killed in Aleppo, 40 percent of
whom were women and children. In the past year alone, 328 children
have been killed by terrorist shelling in Aleppo, and 45 children
were killed by terrorist snipers.
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