In Grozny, a woman walked outside her home, only to be startled by deafening explosions that could be heard from miles away. What she was hearing was Russian bomber jets releasing deadly missiles on innocent men, women and children.
That woman, Malika Istamulova said, I fell to the ground and then ran to my café and saw my coworker lying on the ground with her separated from her body.
Throughout the whole evening, rocket explosions devastated much of Grozny. Russian military officials said the bombings were intended to destroy illegal armies in Grozny and they insisted that no civilians were hurt.
Unfortunately they were wrong, as Russian bombs murdered 118 Muslims and injured 400 more seriously injured. Many of the casualties were in a food market that Russian missiles packed in.
Khussein Osmanove, saw the whole bombing from a distance. Osmanove said, "I saw a man engulfed in flames running across the market. We managed to put out the fire, and he ran away in shock and half naked."
Residents from a nearby apartment building rushed to the market after hearing the roaring blasts. One unidentified source said, "I saw a young man, his leg torn away, pleading for me to help him."
The unidentified man ran back home and returned in a car and drove the three injured people to the hospital. Two of them died on the way, and a third died later in a hospital.
Just hours later, another missile exploded in the yard of the city's Central Maternity Hospital, just located a few hundred yards from the destroyed central market.
One of the doctors said in a rush, "We had just handled the deliveries of two women, and sat down to rest when we heard the blast in the yard and plaster and shards of glass fell.
Local hospitals were filled with bodies and blood scattered on the floor everywhere. The people that lay in there alive had to watch as others die before their eyes.
The hospital, a somewhat primitive one to western standards, was darkly lit and very cold inside with temperatures dropping to 39 degrees below zero. Power and heating have been cut off in Grozny, which makes the whole situation even more worse.
Doctors and nurses said many of the injured were in grave condition and are likely to die because of freezing weather and a severe shortage of medicine and other supplies .
A few hours after the bombings, people went to the market in search of missing relatives who had not helped who had returned home the night before. The destroyed market stalls were filled with blood and body parts lay all over the ground.
Children were crying and searching for their parents while holding their body parts. Police officials are still trying to rummage through the fragmented market and hope incidents like this wont reoccur.