ABOMINATION 4 LATER HOSPITAL IS DESTROYED BY A RUSSIAN BUNKER BOMB

A Russian cluster bomb rolls into an Aleppo hospital ...hours later 50 children are dead or maimed. This is not just a war crime, says heroic British surgeon, it’s an...

THE text message from Aleppo flashed up on my phone as I was curled up on the sofa watching animated film The Good Dinosaur with my wife and 14-month-old daughter. It came from a much-loved Syrian friend, a surgeon like me. Written in haste, it read starkly: ‘Massacres in Aleppo today… 168 cases arrived at the hospital. All of them civilians and mostly children.’

The scene of family contentment at my home in South-West London instantly dissolved. For the next 48 hours I dispensed advice, directed an operation and issued general instructions via instant messaging service WhatsApp to medics 2,500 miles away as they fought to save the lives of children pulverised by ball-bearings from cluster bombs dropped from the skies above the most benighted city on Earth.

Those injured had been lined up in an orderly queue at the time, waiting for bread to feed their starving families. As it transpired, 50 children were taken to hospital M10, the codename used by local doctors to disguise its location. Twenty were dead before they got there; others would succumb to their injuries.

Of the rest, no one knows for sure because over the next few days the hospital – which moved underground in 2014 – was repeatedly blasted from above, on at least one occasion by Russian bombs, until finally it was no more.

That Saturday evening, my colleagues in Aleppo sent me photos of many victims, not only so I would help but also in the hope I would alert the world. A world that isn’t listening and that has averted its gaze.

There were dust-covered dead children; mangled infants teetering between life and death; a little boy, one of the luckier souls, holding his smashed hand aloft; there were X-rays in which ball-bearings lodged in spines and brains appeared as little white spots.

Some of the images I couldn’t bear to open – there were just too many – and there are those I did open and that will never leave me. It was all so painful. Two brothers, for instance, aged about four and six, were pictured side by side on a trolley, life ebbing from them with each passing hour. Later I would learn they both died the following day because there were no fluids to give them and no ventilators available. No one knew their names.

Every corner of M10 overflowed with the suffering of children. While I directed an operation from afar – the removal of ball-bearings from the inflow to a liver – a neurosurgeon performed brain surgery on the intensive care unit floor. I was in a quiet corner of my comfortable home; my friends were working in a scene of unimaginable horror, not knowing if the next bomb would claim their lives too.

Earlier that day, a few hours before

theh attack k on theh children,hild I received id some worrying news. Looking back it was a terrible portent.

A cluster bomb had dropped next to M10 then rolled down a sloping passageway into the emergency room where, mercifully, it skidded to a halt without exploding.

Imagine the panic. The staff knew nothing of cluster bombs – they had never seen one – and contacted me to ask my advice. I knew of the indiscriminate devastation they cause, how they pose a particular threat to civilians, but I have to admit I had to read up on them.

Little did any of us know that we would be dealing with their pernicious effects a few hours later.

The messages and photos came in fits and starts and, later, as I lay in bed in a state of anxiety, I wondered what was coming next. As a family, we found it an upsetting two days. For my friends in Aleppo it was simply the worst 48 hours of the war.

I was desperately concerned about them; they were working flat-out for days on end, with no sleep and very little food. I have visited Aleppo three times since 2011 and I feel like a father figure to them; that’s why this is so painful for me. I love them – I wished I could have been with them.

Now, with M10 gone, they are scattered among Aleppo’s few remaining medical facilities.

I heard from one of them a few days ago. He said: ‘After the bunker bomb… the air strikes became a little bit lesser. When the bunker bomb targeted the hospital we were there and ten metres from it, but in a room under the ground. Thank God we’re still alive.’ People ask how I cope having previously suffered post-traumatic stress from my time working in Syria and other conflict zones. How does it feel to be so involved? More than anything it makes me angry that nothing is being done. If you are not heavily emotionally involved in a situation, as I am, then you detach yourself from the horror; I understand that. But the West cannot turn away. Andrew Mitchell is one of the few MPs who has spoken out. A few days after the attack on the children, I visited him at his home and showed him the pictures. He was horrified. Tomorrow he will seek the permission of the Speaker to hold an emergency debate on Aleppo and Syria in the Commons. It is heartening news. I am not political but wouldn’t it be wonderful, for instance, if Theresa May, as a symbolic gesture, were to visit Vladimir Putin and remind him that international laws are being broken. It would simply show we care. Someone from the West needs to demonstrate clear leadership or history will judge us harshly. It will record we sat back – and did nothing.