The image of the stunned and tired looking boy, sitting in an orange chair inside an ambulance covered in dust and with blood on his face, encapsulates the horrors inflicted on the conflict-hit northern city and is being widely shared on social media.
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Ali Daqneesh, older brother of Omran Daqneesh, the Syrian boy whose image, dazed and bloodied after an airstrike, shocked people around the world, died in Aleppo from wounds he sustained in the same incident, a war monitor, a local council official and a witness said.
Omran and his three siblings, aged one, six and 10, and his mother and father were pulled from the rubble after an apparent Russian airstrike on Aleppo’s rebel-held district of Qaterji on Wednesday night.
Rebels, supported by the United States, Turkey and Gulf Arab nations, have been fighting since 2011 to oust President Bashar al-Assad, who is supported by Russian Federation and Iran.
“These are children bombed every day”. The U.S. state department on Thursday called Omran “the real face of what’s going on in Syria”, according to the Guardian.
“What strikes me is we shed tears, but there are no tears here”.
“Usually they are either unconscious or crying”.
“Omran became the “global symbol of Aleppo’s suffering” but to most people he is just that-a symbol”, Kenan Rahmani, a Syrian activist, wrote on Facebook. “But Omran was there, speechless, staring blankly, as if he did not quite understand what had happened to him”.
Russian and Syrian warplanes have intensified their airstrikes on the rebel-held east of the city since insurgents made an advance last month, breaking an effective siege.
But neither side has achieved a decisive victory despite hundreds dead on both sides.
“Not one single convoy in one month has reached any of the humanitarian besieged areas”, he told reporters. More than 290,000 people have been killed since Syria’s conflict broke out, including almost 15,000 children.
It says almost 18,000 people have died in custody since the crisis began in March 2011, but the group believes that number is a low estimate and the true figure is much higher.
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The human rights group said in a report that many other people have been tortured.
