The Syrian civil war has ravaged the country for five years, and fighting has escalated in recent weeks, killing and injuring hundreds, including many children – largely the result of Syrian government “barrel bombs” and Russian airstrikes.
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A chilling image of a young boy who was pulled from the rubble of an airstrike that hit Aleppo, the center of Syria’s bloody civil war, on Wednesday is calling renewed attention to the war’s continued devastation.
“Today’s suspension of the United Nations taskforce inside Syria means that the humanitarian community won’t be able to reach children like Omran Dagneesh, the five-year old boy whose image today re-awakened the world to the horrors of the Syria conflict”. Considered by many to be the world’s most risky city, Aleppo is the focal point of an ongoing bloody stalemate between the regime of Bassar Assad, rebel forces, ISIS and other extremist groups. There was no sense in meeting, he said, when no aid had been delivered to any besieged areas since the beginning of August. The U.N.is hoping to secure a 48-hour pause in the fighting in Aleppo. Osama Abu al-Ezz confirmed he was brought to the hospital known as “M10” Wednesday night following an airstrike on the rebel-held neighborhood of Qaterji.
An aid worker scoops the boy up and quickly sets him down by himself inside the ambulance before returning to rescue more from the rubble of the air strike in Aleppo. He said he had passed along three lifeless bodies before receiving the wounded boy.
None of them sustained major injuries, but their building collapsed entirely soon after the family was rescued.
The strike occurred during the sunset call to prayer, around 7.20 p.m., said Mr. Raslan, a correspondent for Al Jazeera Mubashir. A second building, next to theirs, was also heavily damaged.
“We sent the younger children immediately to the ambulance, but the 11-year-old girl waited for her mother to be rescued. Her ankle was pinned beneath the rubble”, Raslan said. He runs his hand over his face and looks at the blood before wiping it on the seat.
Doctors in Aleppo use code names for hospitals, which they say have been systematically targeted by government air strikes.
Activists living in opposition areas rely on informers in the government-controlled Latakia province to warn residents of impending airstrikes.
An informant told activist networks that a jet had left a Russian airbase on Wednesday evening.
“We expected the plane to arrive in Aleppo airspace in two minutes, and sure enough it did”, said Raslan. “Because one thing, fighting”, de Mistura said. However, one member of the local media told Time that, “Omran and his family are well now, all his family survived”.
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Last year, global sympathy for victims of Syria’s war was heightened by a photo of a drowned 3-year-old refugee from Syria, Alan Kurdi, washed up on a Turkish tourist beach.
