SYRIA: 5 children were killed on Thursday in a barrel bomb attack carried out by government forces on a rebel-held neighbourhood of Syria’s Aleppo cityA heartbreaking video shows a devastating scene: Two boys covered in dust desperately cling to each other and cry.
A heartbreaking video shows a devastating scene: Two boys covered in dust desperately cling to each other and cry.
The Britain-based group said regime aircraft had dropped two explosive-packed barrel bombs several minutes apart on the Maadi district of eastern Aleppo.
It’s one of several harrowing videos activists shared after a barrel bomb in the Syrian city of Aleppo killed at least 15 people, including children.
Activists offered differing accounts of how many children were killed in Thursday’s airstrike, which reportedly occurred in the rebel-held Bab al-Nayrab neighborhood. The activist group Aleppo Media Center reported five children were among the dead; the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 11 children had died.
“There was a first barrel bomb and when people gathered and the ambulances arrived, a second barrel struck and there were more deaths,” an AFP reporter in the rebel-held part of the city said.
“One ambulance was completely destroyed,” he added, citing the local civil defence unit.
The Observatory said dozens more were injured in the two strikes and the death toll was expected to rise.
‘I lost five children’ shouted a mother reacting to the attack.
Activists posted videos of the Aleppo barrel bomb attack online. Daily Pakistan hasn’t independently confirmed the authenticity of the videos, which reportedly show a rebel-held area in southern Aleppo after the attack. In the videos, rescuers help survivors and search for the missing. Residents dig through rubble, looking for loved ones.
Men and women carry dead children covered with dust, sobbing and crying.
In one video, a man sits outside his demolished house, visibly upset. “Don’t step over them,” he says, referring to his family members. “I lost my five children, oh God.”
Another video posted by activists in Aleppo shows a woman speaking to her dead child.
“Hassan, it’s your mom,” the mother says as she looks at the child whose eyes are still open.
“He is my son … he is gone,” she screams. “My sons, your brother is dead, your brother is dead.”
She touches his face and closes his eyes.
Last week a video posted by the Aleppo Media Center captivated the world and was another stark reminder of the toll of the war in Syria. It showed a boy, Omran Daqneesh — no older than five years old — bloodied and covered with dusk, sitting silently in an ambulance awaiting helpafter his family’s house was destroyed by an airstrike.
As stories of death and destruction continued to emerge Friday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and US Secretary of State John Kerry met in Geneva on Friday to discuss Syria.
