Ali Daqneesh, brother of Syria boy in Aleppo photo, dead days after airstrike
DAMASCUS, Syria -- The brother of a little boy in Syria whose widely circulated picture made him the new face of the country’s civil war has died, CBS News’ George Baghdadi reports.
Ali Daqneesh initially survived an airstrike Wednesday night with his 4-year-old brother Omran Daqneesh, their two sisters and parents in the war-torn city of Aleppo.
Omran had only minor head injuries. Ali died on Saturday from injuries he sustained in the strike, Baghdadi reports.
Haunting footage of Omran’s rescue from the aftermath of the airstrike shook global media.
The image of the stunned and weary-looking boy, sitting in an ambulance caked with dust and with blood on his face, captured the horror that has beset the contested northern city as photographs of the child were widely shared on social media.
An hour after his rescue, the badly damaged building the boy was in completely collapsed.
The civil war has claimed the lives of more than 400,000 people, 41,000 of them children.
Children have been killed and maimed as the Syrian regime and its backers in Russia try to claw back control of the city, CBS News correspondent Holly Williams reports.
Another little boy was pulled from the rubble Tuesday -- bloodied but apparently still alive.
“God is great,” shouted his rescuers, but the truth is Aleppo is Godforsaken.
Another video appears to show a boy who has just lost his brother in an airstrike.
“Take me instead of him,” he cries - another child robbed of his innocence.
The United States is trying to avoid being drawn deeper into this conflict. In the meantime, the Syrian regime is bombing its own people with near impunity.
They’ve even targeted hospitals.
Security camera video shows a strike on Omar Ben Abdul Aziz Hospital in Aleppo last month.
Last week, 15 Syrian doctors still working in rebel-held Aleppo wrote a letter to President Obama telling him about four newborn babies who they said were “suffocated to death after a blast cut the oxygen supply to their incubators.”
Those doctors also demanded that America do more to stop the carnage. :