The older brother of a Syrian boy whose image, dazed and bloodied after an air strike, shocked people around the world, has died in Aleppo from wounds sustained in the same incident, a war monitor, a local council official and a witness said.
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Ammar Hammami said: “‘The media reaction was because the strike on the Qaterji neighbourhood was a big massacre so when this child emerged there were lots of journalists”, said. Omran Daqneesh sits stunned in the back of an ambulance brushing the blood from his face.
An unidentified witness in Aleppo quoted by Reuters news agency said Ali Daqneesh had suffered internal bleeding and organ damage after the 17 August bombing. Ali is the reality: “that no story in Syria has a happy ending”.
The video and pictures were widely circulated online and in the media, refocusing public opinion on Syria’s five-year-old civil war and the plight of civilians, particularly in Aleppo.
On Saturday, the Syrian Obervatory for Human Rights said that more than 300 civilians have been killed in a three-week surge of fighting and bombardment in Aleppo. “The cause of this is Bashar al-Assad”, the Guardian quoted her as saying.
Harrowing footage of a five-year-old boy being rescued in Syria has been viewed all over the world – but his case is similar to that of thousands of others, according to medics.
“Ali, aged 10, succumbed to his injuries”.
On Friday, Russia denied that one of its air raids hit the Daqneesh’s home in eastern Aleppo, saying in a statement that its warplanes “never work on targets that are inside settled areas”.
The Daqneesh boys, their siblings, and parents were injured when a blast obliterated their home in the northern city Aleppo, which has been the scene of fierce fighting between rebels and Iranian- and Russian-backed government troops.
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On Friday, the World Food Programme described the situation in besieged areas as “nightmarish” amid growing worldwide concern over the humanitarian cost of the war in Syria.
