National Post (National Edition)
‘I WANT TO LIVE, I DON’T WANT TO DIE’
SYRIAN GIRL, 7, TWEETS AS HOME IS BOMBED IN ALEPPO JOE O’CONNOR A seven-year-old girl who has been tweeting about the siege of her hometown of eastern Aleppo sent out a message Sunday night that her home had been bombed and her family was on the run. In
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Russia’s Defence Ministry said the areas captured by Syrian government troops include 12 neighbourhoods and more than 3,000 buildings during the past few days. It said Syrian government troops are now controlling 40 per cent of the rebel-held parts of the Syrian city of Aleppo.
“It’s like doomsday,” Zaher al-Zaher, an anti-government activist in eastern Aleppo communicated to The New York Times News Service, in a series of text messages. Hisham al-Skeif, a member of council in a rebel-held area, was scrambling to find housing for families that had been displaced by the fighting.
“The problem today, in this moment, is not water and food,” he told The New York Times News Service. “We are threatened with slaughtering.”
Government advances shattered a standoff that had lasted months, after government forces surrounded and besieged the rebel-controlled parts of the city this year, closing off regular access to food, medicine and other supplies. The ministry reported that more than 100 rebels had laid down their arms and exited the Syrian city’s eastern suburbs.
Aleppo, Syria’s largest city and former commercial centre, has been contested ground since the summer of 2012. A rebel defeat there could be a turning point in the five-year conflict. If Syrian forces capture all of east Aleppo, President Bashar Assad’s government will be in control of the country’s four largest cities — as well as the coastal region.
The government’s latest push, backed by thousands of Shiite militia fighters from Lebanon, Iraq and Iran, and under the cover of the Russian air force, has laid waste to Aleppo’s eastern neighbourhoods. Medical and food supplies have been running short in recent weeks as Syrian warplanes pounded the besieged enclave, rendering all remaining functioning hospitals out of service.
On Saturday, Bana had tweeted, “Please save us right now,” a plea accompanied by a photo of a debris cloud kicked up by the bombs that had begun falling.
Bana joined Twitter on Sept. 24. Her first tweet read: “I need peace.” Her second: “I can’t go out because of the bombing, please stop bombing us.”
Her mother Fatemah manages her Twitter account. The tweets came daily, some praying for peace, others urging the outside world to make the killing stop, and others pointing to what her life had been like before. Bana posted a photo of herself from before the war. She is about kneehigh and wearing a winter coat and hat. Her winter boots have tiny tassles on them.
Bana aspired to be a teacher, like her mom, but had stopped going to school because of the war. She was three when the conflict started, and had memories of going to parks and zoos and restaurants. She has two younger brothers, Noor, 5, and Mohamed, 3, and she told The Daily Telegraph that, as their older sister, she was doing her best to appear brave for them.