Bored snipers in Syria are playing a "death game," and their targets include children and pregnant women, a British surgeon has said.
Vulnerable targets in Syria are being shot by snipers in a sickening war game in which their unborn babies appear to be used for target practice, according to Dr. David Nott, who spent five weeks volunteering in a Syrian hospital.
He described his time in the war-torn country as "hell beyond hell."
Such attacks were a hell beyond hell, David Nott said
He reported seeing some vile patterns emerge among the victims coming into his hospital.
He told ITV News: "It seemed to me that it was sort of a game they were having with each other and many times we would have the same wounds coming in every single day.
"One day we would have pregnant women brought in with gun shot wounds to the uterus, not only just one or two, but seven or eight, which meant to me that they must be targeting pregnant women".
Dr Nott told The Times that in his 20 years volunteering in war zones, this is the first time he had witnessed pregnant women being targeted.
"I can’t even begin to tell you how awful it was," he told the newspaper.
"Usually, civilians are caught in the crossfire. This is the first time I’ve ever seen anything like this. This was deliberate."
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More than 100,000 people have been killed in the two and half years since the Syria conflict escalated into a full-blown civil war. According to United Nations, thousands of those victims are children.
Syria Relief was among three charities that supported Dr Nott's trip. It issued an X-ray apparently of a full-term foetus with a bullet in its skull.