The bloodied, dust-covered face of Omran Daqneesh, the five-year-old Syrian boy recovered from the rubble left by an airstrike this week, has shocked the world.
Omran has become a symbol of the ongoing civil war in Syria, but he is just one of an estimated 75,000 children fighting to survive in eastern Aleppo, the divided and once-great city at the heart of the struggle between the regime of Bashar Assad and the rebels attempting to oust him.
The seizure in June of the Castello Road, the last remaining route into the rebel-held eastern section of the city, by pro-government forces aided by Russian air support, made life even more difficult for the 300,000 Syrians still living there. Humanitarian aid was unable to get through and few trapped there were able to leave. Opposition forces managed to break the siege in early August but fighting has only gotten more intense since then. The U.N. and aid groups are warning of a humanitarian catastrophe.
Few are more at risk in that catastrophe than the children of eastern Aleppo; prevented from going to school or even hospital, as both are deemed too unsafe, they live under constant fear of attack. They survive, rather than live.
TIME spoke to aid workers familiar with Aleppo to discover what daily life is like for thousands in the war-torn, eastern part of the city: Full story...
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Omran has become a symbol of the ongoing civil war in Syria, but he is just one of an estimated 75,000 children fighting to survive in eastern Aleppo, the divided and once-great city at the heart of the struggle between the regime of Bashar Assad and the rebels attempting to oust him.
The seizure in June of the Castello Road, the last remaining route into the rebel-held eastern section of the city, by pro-government forces aided by Russian air support, made life even more difficult for the 300,000 Syrians still living there. Humanitarian aid was unable to get through and few trapped there were able to leave. Opposition forces managed to break the siege in early August but fighting has only gotten more intense since then. The U.N. and aid groups are warning of a humanitarian catastrophe.
Few are more at risk in that catastrophe than the children of eastern Aleppo; prevented from going to school or even hospital, as both are deemed too unsafe, they live under constant fear of attack. They survive, rather than live.
TIME spoke to aid workers familiar with Aleppo to discover what daily life is like for thousands in the war-torn, eastern part of the city: Full story...
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