A high-ranking Russian military officer has been killed in the Syrian city of Aleppo, the Russian Defense Ministry says.
The ministry said on December 7 that a Russian colonel who worked as a military adviser in the government-controlled part of Aleppo died after being wounded by rebel shelling.
"Ruslan Galitsky passed away in the hospital as a result of his serious injuries. Russian army medics fought for several days to save his life," a ministry statement said.
According to the ministry, Galitsky was wounded in the shelling of a residential area in western Aleppo by the "so-called opposition," a reference to rebels fighting against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government.
Galitsky is the third Russian reported killed in Syria this week. The Defense Ministry said on December 5 that two female medics were killed by what it said was the rebel shelling of a makeshift Russian military hospital in Aleppo.
Russia has been flying air raids in Syria since September 2015 and has provided longtime ally Assad's forces with other military support during the more than five-year-old war that has killed at least 250,000 people.
