In this still image taken from a video shot by the Aleppo Media Center, a five-year-old boy sits in an ambulance after being pulled out of a building allegedly hit by an airstrike.
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The small boy is covered head to toe in dust and blood has dried on his face after it poured from his forehead following an airstrike on a building in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo.
At 7pm on Wednesday the rebel infiltrated neighbourhood of Qaterji faced a devastating air strike.
A local doctor identified the boy as 5-year-old Omran Daqneesh.
“We were passing them from one balcony to the other”, said photojournalist Mahmoud Raslan, who took the iconic photo, according to the AP.
The child is reported to be five-year-old Omran Daqneesh, one of five children injured late on Wednesday by a military strike on the city.
More than 4,500 of those killed were children under the age of 18, the Observatory said Thursday, after the video of Omran went viral. At one point he reaches up, touches the blood, looks at it briefly, and then ashamedly rubs his hand on the seat beside him, desperate to rid himself of the bright red symbol of his trauma. He does not initially cry or otherwise express any emotion, and his face remains flat.
Children have paid the price of the country’s almost five-year civil war. Photographs of the boy were widely shared on social media.
“People are leaving Syria not only because of the destruction of their communities and the dangers to their lives, but also because of their increasing poverty and the lack of schooling available for their children”, says a former teacher from southern Syria who now works with the IRC.
More than 290,000 people have been killed and millions displaced in Syria’s civil war, which began in 2011.
He is wearing a T-shirt and shorts but his feet are bare, having apparently lost his shoes when he was pulled out alive but in shock from the family apartment destroyed in an air raid. “Her ankle was pinned beneath the rubble”, Mr Raslan said.
In recent days, Russian Federation signalled that it was close to reaching a deal with the USA on fighting the Islamic State group in the Aleppo area. He explained that doctors use code names for area hospitals because the government has been targeting them in airstrikes.
The U.N. wants to arrange a 48-hour ban on the fighting in Aleppo.
Meanwhile, the United Nations envoy to Syria has suspended his humanitarian task force as the fighting continues.
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In the video clip, the boy is first seen being handed off from one rescuer to another as first responders rushed Tuesday night to the darkened scene of an apparent airstrike in the opposition-held part of the divided city.
