5-yo boy dies in Aleppo hospital seeing ‘worst month in 5 years’ of rebel attacks

Dozens, including many children, have been injured and killed in constant rebel shelling over the past month, doctors at Al-Razi Hospital in Aleppo told RT. They also confirmed that a five-year-old boy, who received a heavy head injury last week, didn’t make it.

A five-year-old Syrian boy, named Dia, whose fate RT was following after he was hit with shrapnel in the head during rebel shelling, has succumbed to his wounds, the doctors told RT’s Lizzie Phelan, who visited the Al-Razi Hospital where the boy was taken on December 2.

The doctors said that Dia underwent a complex surgery, but his injuries were too grave and he passed away, becoming yet another child to have been killed in rebel bombardment.

The storm of shells over Aleppo has been relentless in recent days as militants and rebels tried to reverse gains made by the Syrian army, Phelan said.

Multiple neighborhoods in government-held parts of the city were hit, with 14 people killed and 50 others injured on Monday. Two Russian medical specialists were also killed and another injured in a mortar attack on a mobile military hospital in Aleppo.

“It was very bad [on Monday] we had about 15 classes of major trauma in the operating theatre,” Mohammad Batiq, a doctor at Al-Razi, told RT. Among them there were four head injuries and three amputations, all performed on children, he added.

Aleppo children told RT’s crew that they weren’t afraid of terrorist mortars anymore as they got used to the fact that the streets are a battlefield.

READ MORE: At least 5 killed in rebel shelling of govt-controlled West Aleppo – RT’s on-the-spot reporter

November and early December have been “the worst month in five years … this month we’re totally occupied for 24 hours,” Batiq said. According to the doctor, there are so many patients coming from Aleppo that “plenty of complicated operations are done by non-professional surgeons” at Al-Razi.

“We have 200 beds in [the] hospital and most of them now are full,” he added.

READ MORE: 2 Russian paramedics killed, 1 gravely injured in militant attack on hospital in Aleppo – MoD

Aleppo has been split between the Syrian government and rebel and militant factions since the start of the Syrian conflict in 2011.

In recent weeks the Syrian army has made successful military advances in the western part of the city, and has provided humanitarian access to thousands of people. The militants, who have opted not to withdraw from the city despite suggestions from Damascus and Moscow, have intensified shelling of civilian areas in the east of the city.