Human face of Syria war

A still image, taken from a video posted on social media said to be shot in Aleppo on Wednesday, shows a boy with bloodied face sitting in an ambulance after an airstrike in Syria.

Images of a five year old Syrian boy – covered in dust and blood after being plucked from a bombed out building – have gone viral after they were posted to social media, provoking widespread outrage and upset.

The footage, released by opposition activists on Wednesday, showed the aftermath of an air strike in the city of Aleppo and encapsulated the human toll of Syria’s five-year war.

The video, posted online by the Aleppo Media Center, shows a stunned and weary looking boy, sitting alone and bewildered on an orange chair inside an ambulance, shortly after he was rescued.

Khaled Khaled, an Aleppo-based member of the Syrian Civil Defense, a volunteer rescue group that operates in rebel-held territory, identified the boy as five-year-old Omran Daqneesh.

The boy was then rushed by members of the group, also known as the White Helmets, to a nearby hospital, Khaled told Al Jazeera.  He suffered from light headwounds and was released later that night.

Three other people were killed and at least eight others, mostly women and children, were injured in the same air strike, according to Khaled.

It was the images of Omran, though, that made the headlines and drew shock and revulsion from both Syrians and foreigners on social media.

A video shot by media activists showed Omran being lifted from a house and placed, before rescuers leave him to go back to the scene. Omran is left alone in the chair, staring blankly, before rubbing his bloodied head.

In a video of a chaotic nighttime scene, a man is seen carrying the boy, covered in grey dust, from the rubble of an unidentified building and placing him on a seat in an ambulance, before leaving him to go back to the scene.  Omran is left alone in the chair, staring blankly.

The boy then runs a hand over his blood-covered face, looks at the blood and wipes his hands on the ambulance chair. He does not cry or make a sound.

The image has been shared thousands of times on social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook.

 “We can get numb seeing dead and injured children remotely day after day,” said journalist Anne Barnard on Facebook, “but some pictures particularly get to the mom in me and this is one. The orange chair. The expression. I want to give him a hug”.

On Twitter, Sima Diab said: “What was your five-year-old son doing today? Mine was playing football. Not Omran, he was saved from an air strike in Syria.”

The pictures of Omran – referred to by many as “the boy in the ambulance” –  were reminiscent of the image of Aylan Kurdi, another Syrian boy whose body was found on a beach in Turkey last year after he drowned as he and his family attempted to cross the Mediterranean in the hope of finding refuge in Europe.

The image of Kurdi’s body brought world attention to the growing refugee crisis, as tens of thousands of Syrians attempted to make the same dangerous journey, fleeing war-torn homes for the stability of Europe.

Will Omran’s photo do the same for Syria?

Source: The Daily Star