A Sudanese-born Muslim cartoonist’s latest drawing on Syrian children has gone viral on social media after a powerful photo of Omran Daqneesh, a 5-year-old Syrian boy rescued after an airstrike in Aleppo, shook the world.
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His younger brother, five-year-old Omran Daqneesh, was pictured in the back of an ambulance after being pulled from the rubble, with an expression of incomprehension on his dust- and blood-caked face.
“Ali, aged 10, succumbed to his injuries”. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has documented 468 civilian deaths in the embattled, divided city since July 31.
The haunting images of four-year-old Omran, clipped from video footage where he is seen quietly staring into space before raising his arms to touch his bloodied forehead, then looking at his hand and wiping it on the orange seat, have reverberated around the world.
The five-year-old Syrian war is besieged by rebel forces backed by the U.S., Turkey, and Gulf Arab nations trying to depose Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, backed by Russian Federation and Iran.
The intensified fighting in and around the city have killed 448 civilians so far this month, the Observatory told Reuters.
Omran was rescued along with his three siblings and his parents from the rubble of their partially destroyed apartment building, according to photojournalist Mahmoud Raslan, who took the memorable photo.
A man who said he was the doctor who treated Ali, told The Aleppo Media Center, an activist collective, that the boy suffered chest wounds, broken ribs and internal injuries. Regime warplanes, backed by Russia’s air force since September 2015, bombard the eastern districts while rebel groups fire rockets into the west. More airstrikes were reported on Saturday, with pro-rebel activists saying one bombing killed seven members of the same family – including six children – early in the morning. He spoke of incessant air strikes and even increased incidences of nervous breakdowns and psychological illnesses.
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According to the Reuters report, the World Food Programme on Friday described the situation in besieged areas as “nightmarish” among growing global concern over the humanitarian cost of the war in Syria.
