A young Syrian boy named Omran Daqneesh has caught the world’s attention after he was rescued from the rubble after an airstrike demolished the apartment building where he and his family were living. The powerful photograph and video footage shows Omran bloodied and full of dust moments after he was pulled from his home bombed by an airstrike in Aleppo, Syria on August 16, 2016.
The 5-year-old sits quietly, in shock. The haunting image of the boy encapsulates the war raging in Syria that is claiming the lives of tens of thousands of children.
“I’ve seen so many children rescued out of the rubble, but this child, with his innocence, he had no clue what was going on,” Mustafa al-Sarout, an Aleppo-based journalist who filmed the video that has now gone viral on social media, told the Guardian. “He put his hand on his face and saw blood. He didn’t know even what happened to him.”
Fortunately, Omran did not suffer any severe injuries and was later released from hospital. Even more miraculous was that everyone in Omran’s immediate family survived the bombing, something that many aid workers involved in the conflict say is rare.
“These are children bombed every day. It’s not an exceptional case,” Mustafa al-Sarout said. “This is a daily fact of Russian and Syrian government airstrikes….This child is a representative of millions of children in Syria and its cities.”
Warning: some viewers may find the footage in the following video disturbing.
When CNN anchor Kate Bolduan reported the news story, she choked back tears. Her emotional reaction is being mirrored by people all over the world who want to see an end to the conflict that has displaced millions of civilians and killed an estimated 400,000 according to the United Nations and Arab League Envoy.
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