Video from inside the Syrian civil war

Inside Syria, one of the world's oldest cities is being turned into rubble.

Four massive bombs tore through the main square of Aleppo Wednesday. The pictures are astounding. Buildings were leveled, victims trapped, at least 40 dead.

Locals examine the rubble from a bomb blast in central Aleppo, Syria, on Oct. 3, 2012.

/ CBS News

This was a city of three million people.

The civil war began as a popular uprising against the Assad family dictatorship which has ruled Syria 42 years.

One of the most experienced war correspondents covering the civil war in Syria is CBS News' Clarissa Ward, who recently traveled with a news crew to Aleppo.

Ward reports it's impossible to overemphasize just how devastating the effect of the regime's constant bombardment has been on Aleppo.

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There are entire neighborhoods that have been reduced to smoking piles of rubble, but also people are living there in a psychologically constant state of fear.

Ward said she sat down with a group of women who said that they hadn't left the house in over a month. And when you hear the sound of the jets coming and you feel that sense of sickening dread, you understand just why that is.