Sitting alone in an ambulance, the boy – identified by doctors as five-year-old Omran Daqneesh – looked dazed and shocked, staring silently as he tried to wipe the blood off his head, seemingly unaware of his injuries.
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Unlike a lot of Syrians who have fled to the surrounding countries, the survivors in Aleppo can not afford to escape.
The reverberating effect of Omran’s image around the world echoes the reaction to the harrowing image of the toddler Alyan Kurdi’s body lying face down on a Turkish beach.
The heartbreaking image of the three-year-old Aylan washed ashore in Turkey, after he drowned during the unsafe boat journey to Greece depicts another reality for Syrians – escape is not an option.
At the time, I think we all thought that that has to be the most hard of choices: either stay in Syria, stay under the bombardment and the barrel bombs, stay inside the besieged zones or leave and risk the sea, risk the crossing, risk that your child is not going to make it to the other side alive. More than 400,000 people have died in the conflict, which has also led to the displacement of millions of Syrians.
The image is certainly a striking reminder of the results of all out war. He has only ever known a world of terror and fighting.
The hospitals are routinely hit by bombs, so many have started operating underground and using code names.
Omran Daqneesh, with bloodied face, sits with his sister inside an ambulance after they were rescued following an airstrike in the al-Qaterji neighbourhood of Aleppo, Syria August 17, 2016.
But as Bolduan highlights, they are just a few of the hundreds of thousands of children trying to escape persecution with their families.
A nurse who treated the fearless mite said he didn’t shed a single tear the whole time – until he saw his mum in the ward. Rescue workers worked until 5 a.m.to retrieve the last survivor from the rubble.
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A man is seen in the video plucking the boy away from a scene of nighttime chaos and carrying him into the ambulance.
