Video and still pictures of a wounded Syrian child sitting in an ambulance in Aleppo after being rescued from the rubble of his family home have rocketed across social media, drawing comparisons to the indelible image almost a year ago of a Syrian toddler’s tiny drowned corpse washed up on a Turkish beach.
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A Syrian boy rescued after an airstrike on Aleppo has become a symbol of the desperate situation in the city.
Aleppo is a city in northern Syria that has been besieged for years during that country’s civil war.
Omran was released from hospital along with his family after physicians treated his head injury.
Five-year-old Omran Daqneesh sits silently and in shock in the seat of an ambulance. Now the image of the boy in the ambulance is bringing new attention to the ongoing agonies of the Syrian conflict.
Video from the airstrike scene showed a rescue worker carrying little Omran from the home after the strike.
His parents and three siblings, ages 1, 6, and 11, were also pulled from the rubble.
Much like the photo of Alan Kurdi, the little Syrian boy whose body washed up on a beach in Turkey past year, the image of Omran Daqneesh has become a symbol of the situation in Syria.
Shortly after the family was rescued, their damaged apartment building collapsed, Raslan says.
As outrage makes its way across Twitter Wednesday night, there is no doubt in the minds of civilians in Aleppo that the horrors will continue, and more children will be wounded in the process.
The fighting has frustrated the UN’s efforts to fulfill its humanitarian mandate, and the world body’s special envoy to Syria on Thursday cut short a meeting of the ad hoc committee – chaired by Russian Federation and the United States – tasked with deescalating the violence so that relief can reach beleaguered civilians. “We were passing them from one balcony to the other”, he said.
The pro-opposition Aleppo Media Centre said the pictures of the boy were taken in the rebel-held Qaterji district of Aleppo on Wednesday, after air strikes that left three people dead and 12 injured.
The Russian Defence Ministry said it takes great care to avoid civilian casualties in its air strikes.
According to reports, one of the boys interviewed at the party said that children will keep burning tires until Syrian President Bashar Assad is ousted and the civil war, which has been raging for more than five years, is over.
The bombardment of the rebel-held east of the city has increased dramatically since an alliance of rebel groups, among them Jabhat Fatah al-Sham – which was until recently a branch of Al Qaeda – broke a government-imposed siege earlier this month.
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On Thursday, Russia said it is ready to support a call from UN Special Envoy Staffan de Mistura to halt the violence in Aleppo to allow for the distribution of humanitarian aid.
