Last week, a heart-wrenching video of a young Syrian boy who was pulled from the debris of his home which was destroyed in an airstrike in Aleppo, emerged. Five-year-old Omran Daqneesh’s older brother, Ali, did not survive the attack, and succumbed to his injuries in hospital on Saturday.
Ali was 10 years old. The boys’ father received mourners at his temporary home after news broke of the death, the Guardian reported.
When the bomb fell on Wednesday, Ali was out in the street playing with his friends. While his father and brother sustained minor injuries in the collapse of their home, Ali was seriously injured in the blast.
Kenan Rahmani, a Syrian activist wrote online:
Omran became the ‘global symbol of Aleppo’s suffering’ but to most people he is just that – a symbol. Ali is the reality: that no story in Syria has a happy ending.
Rebel-held Aleppo is besieged with violence, caught in years of civil war. There is growing frustration that grief at the plight of Omran has not been accompanied by rage at those who dropped the bomb.
With Ali Daqneesh’s death, the death toll this month alone, from fighting in and around Aleppo, has risen to 448, reported CNN. His mother is reportedly still receiving medical care in hospital, and is in critical condition.
The image of five-year-old Omran, sitting deadpan, covered in dust and blood tugged at a sensitive chord in the world and brought renewed global focus to the suffering of civilians in the eastern part of Syria’s largest city.
(With inputs from IANS)
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