A photo of a 5-year-old boy, sitting stunned and bloodied in the back of an ambulance after an airstrike, has quickly become the face of the besieged city of Aleppo in northern Syria.
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The boy was supposedly pulled from the rubble after an air strike in Aleppo’s Qaterji district, a rebel-held area, on what is thought to be Wednesday night. He said he had passed along three lifeless bodies when someone handed him the wounded boy. But raw numbers, statistics, rarely have the emotional punch of a single life, especially that of a child, whose innocence makes it impossible for us to blame the victim – or excuse our own failure to stop the suffering.
This boy’s story is just one of so many more in Aleppo.
A nurse who treated Omran said “he was in a daze”.
Medical workers feared internal injuries, but an X-ray and an ultrasound revealed his wounds were superficial.
His mother and father, as well as his three siblings – aged 1, 6, and 11 years old – were pulled from the rubble after an airstrike landed around 7.20 p.m., shortly before the evening call to prayer. None sustained major injuries.
Most media sources have described the attacks as coming from either the Syrian military or Russian Federation, largely because the video was first shared by an anti-government activist group, the Aleppo Media Centre, and posted on its Youtube channel late Wednesday night.
As he is whisked to a waiting ambulance by first-responders, you will find it hard to ignore his cartoon character T-shirt that is caked in dust and the left side of his face that is covered in blood.
The horror generated by the image of Omran in the orange chair echoes the anguished global response to the pictures of Aylan Kurdi, the drowned Syrian boy whose body was found on a beach in Turkey and came to encapsulate the horrific toll of Syria’s civil war.
The fighting has frustrated the U.N.’s efforts to fulfill its humanitarian mandates, and the body’s special envoy to Syria cut short a meeting of the ad hoc committee – chaired by Russian Federation and the USA – tasked with deescalating the violence so that relief can reach beleaguered civilians.
Meanwhile, Russia has indicated that it is ready to support a 48-hour cease-fire in Aleppo in order to allow aid deliveries.
Aleppo has been roughly split between opposition control in the east and government forces in the west since mid-2012. One of those killed is believed to be a relative of Omran’s family.
“It’s taxing, emotionally”, said Abu Rajad, the nurse.
They were taken to M10 Hospital immediately after the attack.. “Omran’s mum and dad then arrived [at the hospital] shortly after… in a second wave of injured people”.
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Meanwhile, the United Nations envoy to Syria has suspended his humanitarian task force as the fighting continues.
