Aleppo boy, 7, gets surgery for shrapnel injury after 15 days without care
ALEPPO, Syria -- Seven-year-old Abdul Ghani Tarab was eating lunch when a shell hit his home two weeks ago.
Shrapnel hit him in the stomach as Syrian and Russian bombs continued to rain down.
Tarab’s parents said there was only one makeshift clinic still functioning, and it wasn’t equipped to help their son.
“I felt dead inside,” his father said. “I’m his father and I was helpless.”
“He would moan and call for help,” said his mother.
It took two weeks to get Tarab out of Eastern Aleppo to a proper hospital.
After being systematically targeted by Syrian military strikes, there are no longer any working hospitals in rebel parts of the city. Medical supplies are all but gone.
Doctors and nurses are under immense pressure to save as many lives as they can.
Often they cannot.
Overnight, 150 injured people were evacuated from the old city in the opposition-held east.
But there are still thousands of civilians trapped inside.
Tarab begs for water, but he can’t have it, as he is finally about to get life-saving surgery. Something he couldn’t get until now.