A SYMBOL OF RESISTANCE IN SYRIA.
Infant loses eye due to shrapnel from bomb
Karim’s right eye is bright and flickers with curiosity about the world around him. But his left eye is scarred and seared shut.
He is three months old and will never see out of it again, after being injured in two separate government attacks on his besieged suburb near Damascus. The Syrian infant was first wounded by a shred of shrapnel from a bomb dropped by Bashar Assad’s forces in late October as they lay siege to eastern Ghouta, a rebel-held area.
Karim’s mother, Fadiya, was killed by the same bomb as she shopped with her child in what was once the neighbourhood fruit market.
Ten days later, after the baby was discharged from a makeshift hospital, shrapnel tore through the roof of his house, crushing his skull.
In recent days, Karim has become a symbol of eastern Ghouta’s suffering after activists launched a campaign in support of the infant.
Thousands of people have taken pictures of themselves with one hand covering their left eye and posted them under hashtags like #SolidarityWithKarim and #BabyKarim.
Eastern Ghouta has been under siege since 2013, despite being a designated “deconfliction zone” where rebels and the regime agreed to reduce fighting. Conditions have reached a “critical point” in recent months as Assad forces step up the campaign to crush one of the last remaining opposition areas near Damascus.
Abdelmueen, an ambulance driver, was one of the first at the scene after the bomb fell that hit Karim. “I tried to help Karim. His mother was dead and his face was covered with blood and ash,” he said.
“His mother was martyred by one of Assad’s rockets,” said Abu Muhammad, Karim’s father. “Karim was wounded in his head and eyes. The bone in his head was broken.”
Doctors warned Muhammad that the baby needed to gain weight if he was going to recover. But food in the area is in short supply.
Since their mother’s death, it has largely fallen to Karim’s four sisters — the eldest is eight — and one brother to care for him. The family has been subsisting mainly on bread and a few olives. Like most in eastern Ghouta they have no electricity and are able to only occasionally power items using neighbours’ generators.
“A lot of people don’t find anything to eat,” said Fayez, a doctor, who asked that his surname not be published. His own wife was killed at the beginning of the siege in 2013.
“If shelling against civilians doesn’t stop, there are going to be a hundred or a thousand like Karim,” said Moayed al-Halafi, a member of the Syrian Civil Defence, volunteer first-responders known as White Helmets.