Brother Of Omran, Syrian Boy In Haunting Picture, Dies

Beirut: The older
brother of the little Syrian boy, who was pictured sitting in an ambulance
dazed and covered in blood after an air strike, died from wounds sustained in
the attack on the family’s apartment, a monitoring group has said.

Ali, aged 10, succumbed to his injuries. He was badly wounded in the same bombardment as Omran on August 17 in Aleppo, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said yesterday.

The haunting images of four-year-old Omran, sitting in an
ambulance after the attack, his face, arms and legs caked in blood and dust,
have reverberated around the world, becoming a symbol for the suffering of
children in Syria’s brutal five-year conflict.

In video footage from the incident, Omran is seen quietly
staring into space before raising his arms to touch his bloodied forehead, then
looking at his hand and wiping it on the orange seat.

Omran, his siblings and parents were all plucked from the
rubble wounded, but alive, following Wednesday’s bombing on the Qaterji
neighbourhood in rebel-held east Aleppo.

The Aleppo Media Centre, a network of activists in the
divided northern city, confirmed Ali’s death in a video yesterday. The images
of Omran have sparked a global outcry, much like the photo last September of
three-year-old Syrian boy Aylan Kurdi, whose body washed ashore on a Turkish
beach as his family tried to reach Europe.

More than 290,000 people have been killed since Syria’s
conflict broke out, including nearly 15,000 children.

Omran’s home city Aleppo has been divided by government
control in the west and opposition fighters in the east since 2012.

Regime warplanes, backed by Russia’s air force since
September 2015, bombard the eastern districts while rebel groups fire rockets
into the west. Of the estimated 250,000 people still living in the eastern
parts of the city, 100,000 are children, according to the UN’s children agency
UNICEF.

AFP