Viral photo of Omran Daqneesh is a reminder of how the world is failing Aleppo
OP Note: Please be advised that there are photos in this article that are heartbreaking and graphic (which is why I posted them inside the LJ cut). I've also included updates on the 48-hour ceasefire Russia and the UN have agreed to, as well as stories of people risking their lives to provide aid to people in Aleppo.
The little boy from Aleppo who jolted the conscience of the world - the story behind the photograph
With his face caked in dust and splattered with his own blood, the Syrian father began to dig through the rubble of what had been - until moments earlier - his family’s home.
He barely paused as he pulled his five-year-old son Omran from the wreckage caused by the Russian airstrike. Somewhere beneath the stones were four more of his children and his wife.
Instead, he passed Omran to a man next to him, who passed the boy to another man, until the child had travelled through a human chain of volunteers to the backseat of an ambulance waiting on the street below.
There the boy sat, his bare feet barely reaching the edge of the adult chair and his eyes glassy with shock, as he stared out the ambulance doors and into the chaos beyond.
Doctor in #Aleppo just sent this photo of a dazed child who survived an airstrike pic.twitter.com/IHLDc6KPh8
- Raf Sanchez (@rafsanchez) August 17, 2016
A photograph of five-year-old Omran Daqneesh at that moment has since been seen around the world, shared thousands of times on social media, and brought home a fragment of the horror the people of Aleppo are enduring under relentless bombing by the Assad regime and its Russian allies.
Much like the picture of Aylan Kurdi, the Syrian-Kurdish infant whose body washed up on a Turkish beach less than a year ago, Omran’s image temporarily jolted a world which many Syrians fear has gone numb to their suffering after five years of gruelling civil war.
Offers of help flooded in from across the planet, as parents everywhere saw something of their own children in Omran’s little face. “What can we do, there must be something?” asked one Twitter user. “I cannot keep scrolling down and trying to forget this reality.”
For those living through the reality in Aleppo, the airstrike that destroyed the Daqneesh family home on Wednesday night was unremarkable given that bombs fall almost every hour.
Syria’s second largest city has been a battlefield for years but the rate of airstrikes by Russian jets of regime helicopters has intensified dramatically since a combined force of rebels and jihadists broke a siege by Bashar al-Assad’s forces earlier this month.
“They are angry because the siege was broken and are taking revenge,” said Muhammad Zain al-Khandakani, a lawyer in Aleppo. “A father can leave his home to buy bread and never return. A boy can go to work and never return. I don’t know how their pilots can drop bombs 24 hours a day.”
The block of flats where the Daqneesh family lived and one other building were both hit at around 8pm by a pair of fighter-bombers, according to witnesses who rushed to the Qaterji neighbourhood moments after the bombs fell.
Among the volunteers was Mahmoud Raslan, a photographer who documents the carnage in his city. When he reached the bomb site he left his camera slung over his arm and instead climbed onto a balcony and into the flat, where Omran’s father handed him his injured son.
Mr Raslan took no pictures until Omran was safely in the ambulance. Then he raised his camera, focused on the doll-like child and his blank expression, and clicked the shutter.
“When I saw the photograph I knew it was very painful and very powerful,” he told The Telegraph. “Normally the boys are crying. But this boy is different because he wasn’t crying. He was in a state of shock. That’s what makes the picture so striking.”
As Mr Raslan was uploading his photograph, Omran, his siblings and his parents were being rushed to M10, a makeshift hospital in Safour where a team of surgeons and nurses do their best to save lives with few medicines and intermittent electricity.
The hospital has been hit repeatedly by Russian airstrikes and staff have lined the walls with barrels filled with soil to try to shield their patients from the blasts.
Incredibly, all seven members of the Daqneesh family survived the explosion that destroyed their apartment. Only one child, Omran’s older brother, was kept in hospital to be treated.
His parents declined to speak to the media about the viral image of their son, saying they were frightened the Assad regime would take revenge on family members who are still living in government-controlled areas.
Omran was still silent when he reached M10 but his eyes widened at the sight of the blood and injuries around him.
“He didn’t believe what he was seeing. He didn’t know what was happening around him,” said Muhammed Abu Rajab, an X-ray technician who treated his wounds. “When he finally spoke, his first words were to ask for his father.”
After treating Omran’s head injury and cleaning the dust from his face, staff at M10 concluded that he had not suffered any brain damage and released him to his parents, who were both lightly injured. The family is now staying with relatives.
Some Syrian activists embraced Omran's global recognition and tweeted pictures of him as a spectre of conscience, asking why the world was doing nothing to stop the slaughter in Aleppo.
Syrians are tweeting Omran's picture as they ask why the world is doing nothing about the killing in #Aleppo pic.twitter.com/ioXM3Tgmke
- Raf Sanchez (@rafsanchez) August 18, 2016
But while others were transfixed by Omran’s picture, the doctors in Aleppo had no time to linger on one boy’s minor head wound.
On Thursday morning, the killing began again. Bombs struck a group of teenage boys who ran a car repair service on a roundabout in the Salaheen neighbourhood. The young men were less lucky than Omran, and at least ten people were killed. Several died on the hospital floor as doctors desperately performed CPR.
Dr Zaher Sahloul, a senior advisor with the Syrian-American Medical Society, sounded weary as he discussed the picture of Omran.
“Every day we see dozens of pictures of children who have been mutilated by barrel bombs or burned by chemical weapons or killed in a missile attack. All of them are painful and show suffering on the faces of innocents,” he said.
“It’s hard to know why one picture captures the imagination of the world while the others pass by unnoticed.”
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Russia ready to support weekly 48-hour humanitarian ceasefires in Aleppo - Defense Ministry
The Russian Ministry of Defense has backed a proposal from the UN Syria envoy to organize 48-hour weekly ceasefires to supply humanitarian relief to Aleppo citizens. The first truce could be organized as early as next week.
The proposal - which was originally voiced last week by the UN Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura, who called for 48-hour ceasefires instead of the three hours proposed by the Russian side - has been welcomed in Moscow.
As a means to broaden the scale of the humanitarian mission in Aleppo, the Russian Defense Ministry is ready to back the UN proposal to introduce the 48-hour pauses, which would allow the city’s population to be supplied with food and medication, and for vital infrastructure damaged by terrorist shelling to be restored, the ministry’s spokesman, Major General Igor Konashenkov, said.
A test-run of the 48-hour truces could be organized next week to see if relief can reach civilians safely.
“A more precise date and time will be determined after receiving information about the readiness of the convoys from the UN representatives and receiving confirmation of the security guarantees of their safe travel from our American partners,” Konashenkov said.
The Russian Ministry of Defense proposed that humanitarian aid be delivered to Aleppo by two separate routes to western and eastern parts of the city, as the eastern part of Aleppo is controlled by militia while the western part is controlled by government forces.
The first route will start from Gaziantep, Turkey, through a border checkpoint, and by the Castello road to the eastern part of Aleppo. The second one will use the road to the east of Aleppo which encircles the city to the Handarat area, and then by the Castello road to the western part of the city.
The Ministry of Defense added that Moscow is ready to discuss the issues concerning the safety of UN humanitarian convoys with Damascus and expects the same security guarantees from Washington regarding the so-called “moderate opposition” and other units.
The UN has welcomed Russia’s support of the decision to put hostilities in Aleppo on 48-hour pauses weekly to make sure humanitarian convoys reach their destinations, Farhan Haq, deputy spokesman for the secretary-general, said on Thursday.
The special envoy for Syria has been informed by the Russian Ministry of Defense, Haq said, adding that the UN is ready to begin the delivery of aid and is looking forward to receiving further details on introducing humanitarian pauses in Aleppo.
“The special envoy welcomes the Russian Federation statement, and the United Nations humanitarian team is now set to mobilize itself to respond to this challenge," de Mistura said in a statement, as cited by Reuters.
“Our plan is to collectively work out the operational details, and be ready for delivery as soon as possible,” he also noted.
Russia’s intention to start a trial 48-hour humanitarian pause as early as next week has been welcomed by German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier as well.
On July 28, Russia and Syria launched a large-scale humanitarian operation for Aleppo residents, opening three corridors for civilians and those ready to lay down arms to exit the city. Four more corridors were opened several days later.
On Tuesday August 16, Russian long-range Tu-22M3 bombers and Su-34 tactical bombers delivered airstrikes in Syria in Aleppo, Deir-ez-Zor and Idlib provinces against installations of Islamic State terrorists (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL), taking off from Hamadan Airbase in western Iran. The operation was covered by Su-30SM and Su-35S jet fighters which took off from Russia’s Khmeimim Airbase in Syria.
Last week positions southeast of Aleppo were taken by nearly 7,000 heavily armored terrorists, the Russian Defense Ministry reported. Syrian state news agency SANA reported that militants shelled residential areas in the southwestern neighborhood of Hamdania, killing 13 civilians.
In the period from August 7-10 “nearly 1,000 militants were killed and over 2,000 injured,” the Russian General Staff told journalists.
Earlier, Moscow suggested introducing daily three-hour ceasefires for humanitarian passages from the city to take effect from August 11. The proposal was welcomed by the United Nations aid chief Stephen O'Brien and US State Department spokesperson Elizabeth Trudeau.
Some “50 tons of food, basic necessities, medicine as well as 93 tons of water” were delivered to Aleppo following the establishment of “safe routes” since the end of July, according to Lieutenant General Sergey Rudskoy, chief of the main operations department of the Russian General Staff.
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A day in the life of Aleppo's White Helmets
Filmmaker Nagieb Khaja spent 12 days with a team of rescue workers. In war, he witnessed their special bond.
Aleppo, Syria - It's around midnight and two rescue workers are engulfed in smoke, hosing down a fire in a burned out shop in Hanano district. Close to the frontline in the rebel-held eastern part of Aleppo, Hanano is often exposed to artillery fire and aerial bombings.
The body of an old man who was killed by flying shrapnel, lies on the pavement outside.
"It was a Russian aircraft," says a passer-by. "The poor guy was crossing the street when the bomb hit."
An ambulance arrives and tells the rescue workers that they will take care of the body. The White Helmets rescue team is desperate to get moving, yelling at their colleagues to hurry up and get in the truck.
The plane had returned after the first responders arrived and bombed the area a second time. Their colleague Ahmed Badr was hit, and the team now heads to the hospital, anxious to find out what has happened to him.
I lived and filmed with a group of rescuers from the Syrian Civil Defence, better known as the White Helmets, for 10 days last December.
The White Helmets began in 2013 as an ad hoc group of local volunteers in Hanano who would head to bombed places to try to save people.
But extracting survivors is a complicated and difficult task and in the beginning, despite their best efforts, they lacked expertise, which resulted in victims dying under the rubble. The first White Helmets received training in southern Turkey from Turkish earthquake rescuers, before heading back to Syria with equipment and uniforms, including their namesake white helmets.
They now work out of 119 centres in the liberated areas of eight western provinces (Aleppo, Idlib, Hama, Latakia, Homs, Daraa, Damascus and Damascus countryside) and have around 3,000 volunteers, including two teams of women. To date, these volunteers have saved over 60,000 lives.
The men on the Hanano team are aged between 19 and 33. Their routine is relatively simple. They have a "spotter" who communicates with the team by radio - when a place is hit, the team is alerted and guided to the right location.
Their work is psychologically gruelling; they witness death and risk their own lives almost daily. But the team is close, bonded by humour and their constant ribbing of one another.
READ MORE: Syria's White Helmets nominated for Nobel Peace Prize
A makeshift hospital
The team races towards the hospital. After a five-minute drive, the truck stops in front of a large, nondescript concrete building.
As hospitals and health clinics have been bombed, they now operate in secret, makeshift locations. This clinic is in the basement of an apartment complex.
Inside, Ahmed, 20, is lying on a hospital table, chalk white and grimacing in pain. Six of his colleagues are anxiously gathered around him. A lump of shrapnel is in embedded in his leg but the doctors say it's too dangerous to try to remove it - he could bleed to death.
"He's lost a lot of blood, but he'll be all right," the doctor tells them.
Ahmed's companions lift him from the bed, put his arms around their shoulders, and carry him out.
Back at their base, they lay him on a bed, and the room is quiet for a few moments. The guys are emotionally stretched - they're in shock, and the relief that their friend will live has not yet fully set in.
Then, gradually, the jokes start again. Someone lights a cigarette and gives it to Ahmed, and Subhi Hussein, the group's comedian, smacks it out of his mouth.
"Not until you're healthy again," he shouts. "Man, you can't even handle a Russian bomb."
But in the moments when the attention is elsewhere, Subhi's smile disappears and a haunted look returns to his face.
The team has already lost four colleagues to these "double tap" bombings - Russian and regime airplanes frequently return and bomb the same place a few minutes after the first strike, seemingly deliberately targeting rescue workers. The White Helmets will often wait around five minutes to see if the aircraft returns. If it doesn't, they head out despite the risks - if they wait too long, people might die. It is a gamble every time.
Rescue missions
Over the 12 days that I spend with the team, they receive anywhere from two to 12 call outs in a day.
On one occasion we drive to a place that has been hit by a barrel bomb. These bombs are made from propane tanks and empty fuel barrels filled with explosives and pieces of steel. The impact can cause entire concrete apartment blocks to collapse. It's difficult to aim with them, but in this conflict that doesn't seem to matter.
As we pass, people on the streets recognise the White Helmets' old red fire truck.
"Where? Where is it?" shouts 19-year-old Muhammed "Meshko" Lawez, as he hangs out of the door. Men, women and children point them in the right direction.
When we arrive, Meshko and the others run out looking for survivors.
"Anybody here?" they shout, while searching through the dusty rubble.
After five minutes, they are certain that the building was empty when it was hit. They head back to the base.
On another day, a mortar lands on a car in a residential street. They can hear a woman screaming in a nearby house, but the conservative family won't let them in.
The day after, they charge out to a neighbourhood that has been bombed twice. A family emerges from the building covered in dust. In the next street, a man has been killed.
On other days, they head out to find buildings in ruins, but miraculously, no one has been killed - much of Aleppo is deserted, and entire neighbourhoods in the most heavily shelled areas stand empty.
While out on patrol on one occasion, the team stops by the local cemetery to visit the graves of the four colleagues they have lost.
Shahoud spends a quiet moment by the grave of his friend, Mahmoud. He explains that Mahmoud was killed while responding to a bombing. The aircraft had returned 15 minutes after the initial bombing and had dropped a second bomb on the rescue workers. Across Syria, 134 White Helmets have been killed and more than 400 have been injured in the line of duty.
Life on the base
Back at the yard of the base, Ahmed Kurdi, the spotter, tends to the neighbourhood cats. With so many families having fled abandoning their pets, the White Helmets' yard is full of cats who come for the food Ahmed lays out for them.
Whenever the team rushes to the bomb sites, Ahmed stays behind. In a quiet moment he shows me a picture of himself bandaged and comatose in a hospital bed.
"I was shot by a sniper during an incursion by government forces. I dragged myself off the street, and into a basement to hide, but the soldiers found me there and stabbed me, leaving me to die," he says.
He can no longer do physical work, so he works as a spotter. He hasn't seen his family, who are in Turkey, for three years, but he says he stays for the job.
On a quiet evening, Abdul Qader, the driver, gets a visit from his daughter, Walla, aged six, and son, Zacharia, aged three. As the mortars fall in the distance, the men play football with the children and let them wear their helmets and play with their gear. Later, they race an old motorbike, which one of the crew has just bought, around the courtyard.
When it's dark, they go inside to watch television. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) and Assad dominate the news, and the team talk politics.
"ISIS says we're apostates," says Shahoud Hussein, the group's leader and Subhi's twin, "and Assad says we're terrorists. We can't leave Syria. If all the good people flee as refugees, then who are we leaving the country to?"
Shahoud is one of the earliest members of the White Helmets in Aleppo. Like the others, he had a normal job before the war broke out - he used to own a home decorations store.
He has seen colleagues, friends and small children die. Death is part of daily life now, but he says he will never give up his values.
Shahoud says that he never wanted to join the rebel groups or the army.
"I don't want to kill anybody," he says. "I feel it's my duty to stay here and help."
He deplores the sectarianism that has destroyed his country and says he still considers the civilians living in government-held areas to be his brothers.
Family
Meshko fusses over Ahmed like a nurse.
"Are you all right, bro? Can I get you a pillow? Or a juice?"
Shahoud sits quietly in the background. He's a friendly man, always smiling, but now sweat runs off his forehead and he stares blankly into space.
Everybody has lost colleagues. The older ones are particularly afraid of losing the younger men - they see them as brothers they are responsible for.
Some of the team members' families still live in Aleppo, and some have moved them out of the city to safer places. Shahoud's wife and children live in rural Aleppo. His wife, scared of losing him, still pleads with Shahoud to stop working as a White Helmet.
"It's really tough for her," he says, sighing.
"But it's my duty to save these people. If I don't, who will then do it? If the worst thing happens and I die, at least I know that my children will be proud of me and know what I stood up for. "
Later that night Shahoud unfolds his prayer rug and starts his evening prayer. It is even more heartfelt than usual.
Aleppo today
Today, eastern Aleppo is almost under siege. It is difficult to get food and other basic needs into the city.
Pro-government forces and rebels are still fighting and if one side loses the battle, either the 300,000 civilians in eastern Aleppo or the 1.2 million in western Aleppo will be cut off from food and aid. The main supply routes have been cut, and the price of food, medicine and fuel is soaring.
In April, a member of the team, Shabaan, a quiet 23-year-old, was killed by a mortar.
The others have continued to work under increasingly dire conditions as Russian and government aircraft pound Aleppo's neighbourhoods with upwards of 50 bombings every day.
Meshko told me that the team were devastated by Shabaan's death, but they remain determined to continue their work.
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Medics and traders risk their lives to deliver Aleppo aid
The last 10-minute stretch of road leading into Aleppo is a race of life or death for Hatem Abu Yazen, a Syrian doctor who not only worries for his own wellbeing, but also the hundreds of people who flock to the city’s hospitals for treatment. “We would say a quick prayer on the way and make lots of jokes,” the paediatrician says, recalling how he and a group of medics tried to ease the tension as he pressed his foot to the floor.
Drivers making the half-hour trip from the Turkish border face the gravest danger in the final stage of the route into Aleppo, which has endured years of conflict between President Bashar al-Assad’s forces and rebels. They pass a cement factory where fierce fighting rages, while Syrian and Russian war planes circle overhead.
Mr Abu Yazen is among the humanitarians and profiteers who are risking their lives to deliver aid and supplies to rebel-held districts of eastern Aleppo. Some 300,000 people have been besieged for weeks in the divided city and are in dire need of food and other goods.
Rebels broke the siege last week as they launched an offensive against regime troops, securing a narrow southern corridor into the city. But the route remains treacherous, with the struggle for control of Aleppo, Syria’s second city, one of the fiercest battlegrounds of the nation’s five-year civil war.
The suffering of Aleppo’s residents was graphically illustrated when Syrian activists released images of a young boy, Omran Daqneesh, being pulled from the rubble after yet another devastating air strike.
Even so, for locals such as Mr Abu Yazen, there has been an improvement since the government’s siege first took hold last month.
Then, they were forced to use Castello Road, the main supply route into rebel areas, which was under constant bombardment. Drivers used to make mad dashes along the highway, which remains unpassable, as they watched the sky warily for fighter jets.
Rebels say they have now developed a system to ferry food and medical supplies into areas under their control.
“We only move at night in specially outfitted vehicles. We turn off our lights and cover the cars in mud,” says Omar Salkho, a rebel commander in the city. “The routes are deliberately chosen and constantly monitored.”
Scouts are deployed to be on the look out for warplanes, says Moulham, another rebel commander in Aleppo.
“The second a strike [bombing] is done, they inform us and we use the minutes during which the skies are clear to move supplies and forces,” he says.
Local activists and the Syrian Civil Defence, a rescue group, help clear away the debris, charred cars and bodies. They have also dug dirt berms along the route to obscure it from Assad fighters.
There are, however, concerns that Russia, which backs the Assad regime, is intensifying its bombardment of Aleppo after it started using an air base in Iran, allowing it to ramp up the use of long-range bombers.
“The road now feels like it is monitored 24-hours-a day,” Mr Salkho says. “The rebels have their own routes but the civilian situation is a concern. There were 25 civilian cars hit in the past two days.”
Mr Abu Yazen and his team rushed to Aleppo last week when rebels opened the southern route and hospitals pleaded for staff.
“We were the first people to come in on the road,” Mr Abu Yazen says.
More than seven hospitals in the city’s rebel-held east have been damaged by air strikes, forcing doctors to move operating rooms to the basements. Water and electricity have been cut off across Aleppo since rebels broke the siege.
Some doctors were dismayed at merchants who rushed to bring in goods more profitable than medical aid - foods such as vegetables had doubled in price under the siege. Hospital necessities had to wait for secondary shipments.
“Traders brought in food not just because of the general need, but for their own interests,” says Farida, a doctor working in Aleppo. “They always profit.”
Abdo Khodr, a council member in eastern Aleppo, says only five to seven shipments of supplies make it in daily - a small amount for the city’s long-suffering residents.
“Yet people are happy. If you were here, your perspective would shift by 90 per cent, just by seeing how happy people are with what little is coming,” he adds.
Whatever their motives, Hisham Skaff, an activist, says that for locals those coming in are heroes.
“They are driving for the sake of their fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters,” he says “This is what propels them to risk their lives.”
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