Boy’s image shocks world; Russia backs cease-fire
Associated Press
BEIRUT
The Russian military said Thursday it was ready to back a U.N. call for weekly cease-fires for Syria’s contested city of Aleppo, as haunting footage of a young boy’s rescue from the aftermath of an airstrike shook global media.
The image of the stunned and weary-looking boy, sitting in an ambulance caked with dust and with blood on his face, captured the horror that has beset the war-torn northern city as photographs of the child were widely shared on social media.
An hour after his rescue, the badly damaged building the boy was in completely collapsed.
A doctor in Aleppo identified the child as 5-year-old Omran Daqneesh. He was brought to the hospital, known as “M10,” on Wednesday night, after an airstrike by Russian or government warplanes on the rebel-held neighborhood of Qaterji, said Dr. Osama Abu al-Ezz. The boy suffered head wounds but no brain injury, and was later discharged.
Rescue workers and journalists arrived shortly after the strike and described pulling victims from the rubble.
“We were passing them from one balcony to the other,” said photojournalist Mahmoud Raslan, who took the dramatic photo. He said he had passed along three lifeless bodies when someone handed him the wounded boy. Raslan gave the child to a rescue worker, who rushed him to the ambulance.
Eight people died in the strike, including five children, according to a doctor who gave only his first name, Abo Mohammadian. Many doctors working in Aleppo’s opposition areas do not give their full names for fear of reprisals against their relatives in government areas.
A nurse who treated Omran said “he was in a daze.” “It was as if he was asleep. Not unconscious, but traumatized – lost,” said Mahmoud Abu Rajab.