Endless torment of Syria’s children
The toddler’s face is covered in dust from a bomb blast, grey debris sticking to blood from an ugly head wound.
Still alive, but with both eyes closed, the child clutches the shirt of a rescuer in combat trousers.
But 11 other children playing just yards away were reportedly killed yesterday in the same barrel bomb blast in the Syrian city of Aleppo. The dead included a baby aged two months and a three-year-old girl.
Their deaths come a week after the plight of children in the conflict was highlighted by a photo of Omran Daq-neesh, five, dazed and bloodied after an airstrike in the same city that killed his ten-year-old brother Ali.
The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said four women were also killed in yesterday’s bombing in the rebel-held neighbourhood of Bab al-Nayrab. A report suggested last night that the government of Bashar al-Assad – still in office thanks to the support of Russia – was behind the bombing.
Other pictures taken at the scene are too harrowing to publish.
One man carried a lifeless baby amid the rubble, while a young boy tenderly leant over the shrouded bodies of his brother and sister.
A doctor in the area said the bomb yesterday was lobbed from a helicopter to hit more than one building.
Rebel attacks on government-held areas yesterday were also said to have killed eight civilians, including two children. Aleppo is roughly divided between rebels in the east and the government in the west, with both sides killing civilians as they fight.
The UN says Russia is supporting plans for a 48-hour ceasefire around the city so humanitarian aid can be delivered, but assurances from the combatants are still required.
Yesterday’s atrocity in Bab al-Nayrab came as the UN published a report blaming Assad’s regime for attacks on civilians with chlorine gas – a banned weapon – in 2014 and 2015.
Syria’s regime has repeatedly been accused of dropping crude explosive devices, surrounded by shrapnel and placed in metal barrels, on rebel neighbourhoods. Assad has denied the practice, just as he has refused to admit using chemical weapons.
More than 290,000 have been killed in Syria since the conflict began in 2011, with Moscow now helping the government, and Islamic State fanatics still controlling parts of the country.
Fighters from the formerly Al Qaedaaffiliated Al Nusra group and other factions are also involved.