At least 100 children have been killed in airstrikes and combat in Aleppo in August, a monitor reports. On Saturday the older brother of 5-year-old Omran, whose image shocked the world last week, became one of them.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reports that 448 people have been killed in attacks by the regime and rebel groups in Aleppo since the beginning of August. Government and allied Russian warplanes have attempted to put down a push launched by rebels on July 31 to break a regime siege of districts under their control.
According to the Observatory, a Britain-based operation with opposition sympathies, about two-thirds of the deaths were the results of airstrikes and shelling by regime and Russian forces on rebel-controlled districts. The Observatory, which relies on a network of correspondents within Syria, reported that 163 noncombatants, including 49 children, were killed by shells launched into government-controlled areas.
More than 290,000 people have died as a result of Syria’s multifront war, which started as a series of peaceful protests against the government in March 2011.
On Saturday, the Observatory also reported that 10-year-old Ali Daqneesh had died from injuries sustained in an airstrike on Wednesday. An image that circulated last week of Ali’s 5-year-old brother, Omran, temporarily cast new international attention on the conflict and the siege in Aleppo.
“He was martyred while in hospital as a result of the same bombardment that their house was subjected to,” said Besher Hawi, the spokesman for the local council of Aleppo.