INSURGENTS occupying the east of Syria’s second city Aleppo shelled a Russian field hospital yesterday, killing two medical staff.

One female nurse was killed as shells destroyed the tent hospital set up to help refugees fleeing the militants, while a doctor died of her wounds later. Another medic was injured.

Russian Defence Ministry spokesman Major-General Igor Konsehnkov blamed the rebels’ Western backers for the attack, saying: “We know who provided the militants with information on the Russian hospital and its exact co-ordinates.

“The blood of our soldiers is on the hands of those who ordered this murder. Those who created, nurtured and armed these beasts in human form and named them the ‘opposition’.”

Shelling also killed a man and his daughter in government-held west Aleppo, while eight bodies were pulled from the rubble of a building destroyed on Sunday.

The rebels launched a counterattack to the east of the city centre in a bid to recover territory from the huge army advance there on Sunday.

Late on Sunday troops liberated the National Eye Hospital, which had been used as a headquarters by sectarian factions.

The hospital lies on the eastern edge of Aleppo’s old city, half a mile from both the medieval citadel and the Hanano barracks, both heavily-defended army salients.

A further breakthrough in the area could divide the remaining sectarian-held area of the city into two or three pockets.

Earlier yesterday Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said talks with the US over withdrawing insurgent forces from east Aleppo would begin today.

“Any armed group that refuses to leave Aleppo will be treated as terrorists,” he said.

Mr Lavrov rejected a proposed UN resolution for a new ceasefire, saying experience proved it would “be used for regrouping and rearming the extremists and would slow down the liberation of eastern Aleppo from them.”