Caked in dust, 5-year-old Omran Daqneesh was retrieved on Wednesday from rubble following an airstrike in Aleppo’s Qaterji neighbourhood.
Sitting alone in the back of an ambulance, Daqneesh’s small feet barely reach the edge of the chair. His eyes are glazed over with shock and he scarcely seems aware of the blood trickling down his forehead.
Daqneesh’s photograph, which has been widely circulated on social media, highlights the abysmal state of the Syria imbroglio. He is one of five children who were injured late on Wednesday following a military airstrike. Daqneesh was injured along with four other children, one woman and two young men, according to a doctor from Aleppo who wished to remain unidentified.
Video footage shot by the Aleppo Media Center shows rescuers pulling him from the rubble of a house and sitting him in the back of an ambulance. While the little boy makes no sound he eventually raises a small hand to his injuries.
Omran was eventually taken to the M10 hospital, which has itself been struck repeatedly by airstrikes. He was later released later that night after physicians there treated his head injury and cleaned off the dust in his hair, eyes and clothes. Further, according to doctors at M10, another 12 children all under the age of 15 were were also treated at the hospital on Wednesday.
More than 300,000 Syrians are estimated to have been killed in the country’s civil war and it is impossible to know how many civilians have died in airstrikes in Aleppo in recent weeks. Earlier, Reuters reported some 40, 0000 residents have been affected by food and medicine shortages inside Madaya, Syria since the regime encircled the town two years ago and besieged it completely last summer.
