Russia says foreign-backed militants have opened fire on Syrians protesting the closure of a humanitarian corridor out of the battered city of Aleppo, killing 17 civilians and wounding over three dozen more.
Russian Defense Ministry spokesman, Major General Igor Konashenkov, said on Saturday that the incident took place in the terrorist-held eastern Aleppo on Thursday.
Some 500 Syrian people participated in demonstrations across the militant-blockaded areas of Aleppo with at least 200 of them trying to cross into Aleppo’s government-controlled western parts, but the terrorists clamped down on the protesters, Konashenkov said.
He noted that the militants sought to disperse the demonstrators by “shooting … from a heavy machine gun and then mined all the approaches to a checkpoint and placed snipers on the roofs of nearby houses,” Russia’s Sputnik news agency quoted the official as saying.
“Seventeen people died at the site, including two teenagers of 13 and 15 years of age, over 40 people were wounded,” he added.
Konashenkov also pointed out that the terrorists hunted for the presumed organizers of the rallies, arrested 10 and took all to an unknown location.
“They were all executed on the same day," he further went onto say.
Syria has been hit by deadly militancy it blames on some Western countries and their regional allies since March 2011.
The Syrian army has set up a number of humanitarian corridors for people to quit Aleppo. However, terrorists are said to be preventing civilians from leaving the city in a bid to use them as human shields. The Takfiri elements have also mined the streets leading to the exit routes and threatened to kill anyone who defies their order.
Russia has been conducting an aerial campaign against Daesh and other terror outfits in the Middle Eastern country at the Damascus government’s request since last September.
Terrorists killed in army ambush
Meanwhile, a number of terrorists with the al-Nusra Front group, which has recently renamed itself, were killed in the explosion of a booby trap set up by Syrian government forces on a highway stretching from the capital, Damascus, to the city of Sweida in southwestern Syria.
The Syrian government forces later released video footage showing the militants walking into the booby trap.
