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Home » international news » Photo: As Aleppo loses her famous 'Clown' & cat sanctuary, is there any hope left?
 

Photo: As Aleppo loses her famous 'Clown' & cat sanctuary, is there any hope left?

Sehar Qazi | Updated on: 3 December 2016, 15:43 IST
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7-year-old @alabedbana tweets her plight from Aleppo. Are we listening?
The pictures from Aleppo may be gruesome. But we must train ourselves to not look away.

On 30 November, 45 civilians including children and women lay dead at the site of a blast on the streets of the Jub Al Quba neighbourhood of Aleppo in Syria.

It is hard to imagine a battle like the one in Aleppo getting worse, but it continues to.

" We ran. I came back looking for my family and I found my mum dead," says a survivor in a recent video post from Aleppo on Facebook. His face is coated with dust and blood, and he cries out these words while sobbing.

Death of happiness

In November, Alaa Aljaleel's animal 'cat' sanctuary, that represented one of the last remaining symbols of life in the region, became one among the targets of the worn-torn country. The shelter provided food for more than a hundred cats and dogs and many of these poor innocent, previously abandoned and rescued creatures died in the attack.

But this wasn't the only bit of heartbreaking news. Despite constant horrors that plague the city, children were being entertained by a clown, famously knows as "The Aleppo Clown". But the recent air strike didn't fail to kill the last hope and happiness of Aleppo's traumatised children.

Social worker Anas al-Basha, the 'Clown', provided counselling and financial support to 365 children who had lost one or both parents in more than five years of civil war.

A post with his photograph on Children of Syria Facebook page reads, "With him, besieged children in Aleppo laughed" calling him "The last clown of Aleppo."

Rest in Peace, Aleppo's Clown.

Search and rescue team members hospitalize a wounded civilian at the site of blast after Assad Regime's strike over civilians in residential areas of Jub Al Quba neighborhood of Aleppo (Photo by Ibrahim Ebu Leys/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)
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Cries for help online

A teenage girl runs among the dead bodies on the ground at the site of blast after Assad Regime's strike over civilians in residential areas of Jub Al Quba neighborhood of Aleppo, Syria (Photo by Ibrahim Ebu Leys/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)
Residents escape Assad regime bombardment in Al Moyaser neighbourhood of Aleppo (Photo by Jawad al Rifai/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)
Children try to escape from the scene of the air strikes carried out by the war crafts belonging to the regime forces on residential areas in the Al-Shear district, under siege by regime forces, in Aleppo (Photo by Jawad al Rifai/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

"We have no home now. I got minor injury. I didn't sleep since yesterday. I am hungry. I want to live. I don't want to die", Bana Alabed, a 7-years-old Syrian girl was quoted as saying by her mother on Twitter. Bana's mother, Fatemah, manages the account and regularly posts pictures and tweets about the condition they're living in. The tweets give the world a close-up of everyday life in Syria right now, one news media cannot.

Fatemah recently posted a picture of dust and rubble and said that their house has been bombed. They have no home left, like so many others in Syria.

An estimated 25,000 people have been displaced so far. According to UNICEF, an estimated 3.7 million Syrian children under the age of five are living under the shadows of violence and uncertainty.

The battle for life and death in besieged Aleppo leaves little space for anything, except death. Now the question is, who will listen to the plight of those dying Syria? Can anyone bring back the childhoods of Aleppo's children?

First published: 2 December 2016, 16:09 IST
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