Little Syrian Boy Hit By Airstrikes A Vivid Reminder of Horrific Violence And War

This child and many others like him are the cost of war in Syria...

Omran Daqneesh’s entire body covered in dust and his face splattered with his own blood, after being rescued through the rubble in his family’s home.

A photograph of a boy sitting dazed and bloodied in the back of an ambulance after surviving a regime airstrike in Aleppo has highlighted the desperation of the Syrian civil war and the struggle for control of the city.

The child has been identified as five-year-old Omran Daqneesh, who was injured late on Wednesday 17^th August 2016, in a military strike on the rebel-held Qaterji neighbourhood.

The startling image shows him covered head to toe with dust and so disoriented that he seems barely aware of an open wound on his forehead. He was taken to a hospital known as M10 and later discharged.

The image is a still from a video filmed and circulated by the Aleppo Media Centre. The anti-government activist group has been contacted to confirm details about when and where the footage was shot. The group posted the clip to YouTube late on Wednesday, shortly after Omran was injured.

The fight for control of Aleppo has intensified in recent weeks following gains made by rebel groups battling the forces of the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad.

The fighting has frustrated the UN’s efforts to fulfil its humanitarian mandate, and the world body’s special envoy to Syria on Thursday cut short a meeting of the ad hoc committee chaired by Russia and the United States tasked with deescalating the violence so that relief can reach beleaguered civilians.

The UN envoy, Staffan de Mistura, said there was “no sense” in holding the meeting in light of the obstacles to delivering aid. The UN is hoping to secure a 48-hour pause in the fighting in Aleppo.

Rescue workers and journalists arrived in Qaterji shortly after the strike and began pulling victims from the rubble. “We were passing them from one balcony to the other,” said Mahmoud Raslan, a photojournalist who captured the footage. He told the Associated Press he had passed along three lifeless bodies before receiving the wounded boy.

Omran was rescued with his three siblings, aged one, six, and 11, and his mother and father, according to Raslan. None sustained major injuries, but their apartment building collapsed shortly after the family was rescued.

“We sent the younger children immediately to the ambulance, but the 11-year-old girl waited for her mother to be rescued. Her ankle was pinned beneath the rubble,” Raslan said.

A doctor at M10 said eight people had died in the airstrike, including five children. Doctors in Aleppo use codenames for hospitals, which they say have been systematically targeted by government airstrikes.

Omran Daqneesh after being treated by doctors. 

Syria is now in its fifth year of civil war, with the Syrian Center for Policy Research estimating the death toll at a staggering 470,000. Aleppo may be one of the hardest-hit cities. A civil defense worker carries Omran into the ambulance. The airstrike destroyed Omran's home, where he lived with his parents and two siblings.

He and his family were injured when their house was destroyed by an airstrike Wednesday. Miraculously, everyone in his immediate family survived. Activists blame the Syrian regime and Russia for the bombings.

Aleppo, in northern Syria, has been besieged for years during that country's civil war. Thousands of people have been killed there, including 4,500 children, and many lives have been upended.

He was not crying at any point during the rescue.

"He was in extreme shock," according to a spokesman for the Aleppo Media Center, an activist group.

He looks dazed as he sits on the vehicle's orange seat, his hands on his lap, as he waits to be treated, as he waits for somebody to help him.

He raises his left hand to his eye and feels the area around his temple as if he has been hit there. He wipes his face and looks down at the blood.

But Omran has had a lucky escape -- he appears to have been one of the first pulled out of the rubble before his parents, the Aleppo Media Center says. Omran's story repeated every day

"The truth is that the image you see today is repeated every day in Aleppo," said Mustafa al Sarouq, a cameraman with the Aleppo Media Center, who filmed the video. He spoke to CNN's Nima Elbagir via Skype.

"Every day we cover these massacres and these war crimes in Aleppo. When we go to the places that have been bombed, regime planes circle around and bomb it again to kill rescue workers that are helping civilians. They kill these people who are trying to rescue people."

It took nearly an hour to dig Omran out from underneath the rubble, an activist tells CNN. He and other rescuers used flashlights to bring out several people trapped beneath the bombed-out building. Video from the night scene shows another little boy, even younger than Omran, being placed on a stretcher on the same ambulance. A third shell-shocked man stumbles out of the collapsed building and walks into the ambulance.

The doctor who treated him said his injury was light compared to the others wounded in the bombing. He was discharged after two hours.

"Omran was in the same daze and shock you saw he had when he was in the ambulance," said Dr. Mohammedd, a surgeon in Aleppo, who doesn't want to use his last name for security reasons. "He was in the same situation, he did not cry at all."

His mother and brother, who were seriously injured, were smuggled out of Aleppo, and the family is now staying with relatives, the activist tells CNN.

The whole world is silent to these crimes in Aleppo against women and children

"There are thousands of children like Omran who are being bombed daily, killed daily... Everyday this city is hit with every type of weapon, with every type of crime. The living conditions are terrible. The only route out of the city is totally unusable, it is shut. We call on the whole world this regime and these militias that are killing children and specifically the children of Aleppo. These crimes must be stopped in Aleppo."

On Wednesday, three more people died and at least 12 others were wounded in the rebel-held al Qaterchi neighborhood in eastern Aleppo, according to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the Aleppo Media Center. One of those killed is believed to be a relative of Omran's family.

More than 18,000 civilians have been killed in Aleppo province from March 15, 2011 through August 18, 2016, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

More than 4,500 of those killed were children under the age of 18, the Observatory said Thursday, after the video of Omran went viral.

 Some 1.5 to 2 million people still remain in Aleppo, once considered Syria's largest city. It is now divided into rebel-held and government-held areas. Those still there face a terrible choice.

Should they stay in a city subjected to relentless bombing and risk their lives and those of their children?

Aylan Kurdi was drowned in 2^nd September, 2015 015 in the Mediterranean Sea. He and his family were Syrian refugees trying to reach Europe amid the Europe. The young boy found lying face-down on a beach near Turkish resort of Bodrum was one of at least 12 Syrians who drowned attempting to reach Greece.

Or embark on a perilous journey across the sea, and endanger the lives of their families?

Last year another image of a Syrian boy, just 2 years old, blew up social media.

The photo of Aylan Kurdi's body lying on a Turkish beach galvanized the world and became a symbol of the migrant crisis in Europe.

A Sudanese artist based in Doha, Qatar, captured the two stories that symbolize the suffering of millions into one heart-wrenching image.

"The picture describes two scenes from different time periods, but the same war and struggle of Syrian people and refugees of war all over the world," Khalid Albaih told CNN.

"Omran who was pulled from under the ruins after a Russian air strike in Aleppo and also of Aylan who drowned in the Mediterranean."

Asked what inspired him to draw the pictures, Albaih said: "My inspiration came from the fact that I consider myself a refugee. My children are within the same age and could also be in the same situation."

UN calls for halt in Aleppo violence

Hope is far from reach for Omran and thousands of others like him.

The United Nations has been forced to halt nearly all aid deliveries in Syria, faced with the escalating fighting.

"In Syria, what we are hearing and seeing is only fighting, offensives, counter-offensives, rockets, barrel bombs, mortars, hellfire cannons, napalm, chlorine, snipers, airstrikes, suicide bombers," said UN envoy Staffan de Mistura told reporters in Geneva.

"Not one single convoy in one month has reached any of the humanitarian besieged areas. Not one single convoy. And why? Because one thing, fighting."

He abruptly cut short a meeting of the UN humanitarian task force in protest of the violence.

Mistura has attemped to increase pressure on the US and Russia, the task force's co-chairs, to help produce a 48-hour ceasefire in Aleppo.

On Thursday, Russia said it is ready to support that call from the UN Special Envoy to halt the violence in Aleppo to allow for the distribution of humanitarian aid.

"Coming from the international principles of humanitarian law and with intention to extend the scales of humanitarian mission in Aleppo, Russian Defense ministry is ready to support de Mistura's proposal about weekly 48 hour humanitarian ceasefires to deliver the city's citizens food, medicine and to restore vital service systems that got broken in rebels' shellfire," Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov told Russian media.

He said the dates and times of the humanitarian convoys will be set after Russia receives security guarantees from the United States.

Syria and Russia announced in late July the opening of humanitarian corridors for people to flee Aleppo, but many residents stayed in the city, fearing the corridors were not safe. De Mistura said introducing such measures should be left to the UN and its partners, and said that no one should be forced to leave.

Suffering in Syria

Meanwhile, more details of the suffering in Syria are highlighted by Amnesty International.

How to help Syrian refugees

Using survivors' accounts, the Amnesty report details the harrowing conditions for inmates and the brutal methods of torture including rape, sexual violence, flogging, burning and scalding.

UNICEF, the UN children's agency, estimates 8.4 million children are in need of humanitarian aid in Syria and neighboring countries.

What it's like inside Syria's horrific war zone.

The UN's deputy secretary-general said he hoped Omran's story and image would get to people's hearts and brains.

"I think the whole world has failed the Syrian people," said Jan Eliasson, speaking on CNN's "Amanpour." Thursday.

"I think this is an illustration of the huge tragedy that the Syrian people are going through. We talk about this often as this being a nightmare. This is worse than a nightmare because you wake up from a nightmare. But in Syria they wake up to constant nightmares."

He called Syria one of the most frustrating conflicts in the world.

"This is like an infected wound in world politics," Eliasson said. "We've got to end this war."

The image of Omran Daqneesh has been shared thousands of times by people on social media, including by David Miliband, the former UK foreign secretary and now president of the International Rescue Committee. The initial tweet by the Telegraph reporter Raf Sanchez has been retweeted more than 12,000 times.