Aleppo wounded desperate for treatment in Turkey

BAB AL-HAWA, Syria: Lying in a hospital bed in northern Syria, Aleppo evacuee Ali Tarab pleads to be quickly taken to neighbouring Turkey for proper treatment for his shattered leg.

“It was one of Bashar’s barrel bombs that did this to us,” Tarab says, referring to President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

The elderly man was badly injured in a recent barrel bomb attack in war-ravaged Aleppo, a city that has suffered horrific violence for more than four years, and whose opposition-held areas were being evacuated this week.

Tarab and his two teenage sons — one of whom is just 14 — are among thousands of civilians who have been bussed out so far under a fragile deal negotiated by regime backer Russia and Turkey, which supports the rebels.

Pointing to his sons in the beds next to him, Tarab says: “He had his leg ripped off... And look at what happened to me.”

When the attack occurred, Tarab and his boys were out trying to find a cobbler to fix 14year-old Bilal’s shoes.

“I was standing next to my brother. The bomb fell and I was thrown to the ground, and I lost my hand and my leg,” Bilal told AFP, weeping as he recalled the incident.

The other son described a road littered with the victims of the attack that day.

“There were many bodies on the street, we were not the only ones to be injured,” he said.

Since 2012, Assad’s regime has launched numerous bids to recapture opposition-held areas of Aleppo, resorting to near-daily air strikes and barrel bomb attacks despite UN criticism.

Then last month, Russianbacked government forces stepped up the offensive in a bid to crush the rebellion there once and for all. — AFP