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Clarissa Ward, a CNN correspondent who has reported on wars for more than a decade, described the "hell" that is Syria in powerful testimony to the UN Security Council earlier this month.
Ward said that in all of her experience covering war, she has "never seen anything on the scale of Aleppo," a Syrian city that was recently under siege.
Driving into Aleppo, Ward was "blown away by the scale of the destruction," she said.
"You heard Dr. [Samer] Attar use the words 'apocalyptic wasteland,'" Ward continued, referring to a doctor with the Syrian American Medical Society Foundation, who also testified. "Those are the words I wrote down and it sounds like hyperbole, but it is not."
Syria seemed like an "apocalyptic wasteland" even in 2012, only one year into the civil war between President Bashar Assad, rebels fighting his regime, and terrorist groups.
"The shelling was relentless, there were snipers everywhere, and I just remember the feeling of exhaustion from being so petrified all the time," Ward said. "Again I find myself using the same language that we've heard from the doctors this is actually hell. This is what hell feels like."
