Brother of Syrian Boy Who Became Face of Aleppo's Suffering Dies
Omran's older brother has died from his wounds, activists in Aleppo said.
— -- The haunting image of 5-year-old Omran Daqneesh covered in dust and blood stunned the world this week after the Syrian boy was pulled from the rubble of a bombed building in Aleppo. He was injured but alive.
Omran’s older brother, however, died from wounds suffered in the same airstrike, ABC News has learned.
The boys’ father confirmed that his 10-year-old son Ali succumbed to his injuries in a hospital, activists in Aleppo said.
The boys were rescued from a destroyed building in the besieged city’s rebel-held neighborhood of Qaterji following an airstrike. Images and video of Omran sitting in an ambulance looking stunned and caked with dust and blood have been shared thousands of times on social media, capturing the horror of Syria’s five-year civil war.
Eight residents from Omran’s neighborhood were sent for treatment at the same hospital following the airstrike, including four children besides the younger brother.
At another hospital, one child, a woman and an elderly man died from the attack, according to Mohammad, a surgeon in Aleppo who treated Omran and asked ABC News not to publish his last name due to safety concerns.
“Many children are killed in this war when residential neighborhoods are attacked and they are at home or playing in the street,” Mohammad told ABC News on Thursday, adding that 12 children under the age of 15 were injured after attacks on the city Wednesday.
“As doctors, our hearts are full of compassion when we see wounded children," Mohammad said. "Children are innocent and should be far away from everything related to war.”
The surgeon said the younger brother, Omran, “was very lucky. He only had a simple wound in the scalp. We cleaned and stitched the wound and cleaned his face and clothes. There was no brain damage, and he was discharged after two hours.”
“Omran was scared and dazed at the same time. He wasn’t crying at all. It seemed like he had been asleep when it happened,” Mohammad said.
Three to six wounded children arrive at the hospital every day, Mohammad said.
The ongoing conflict in Syria has caused the largest humanitarian crisis since World War II, with more than 8 million children in danger, according to UNICEF.
Mohammad said that repeated attacks on hospitals and lack of specialist doctors are some of the problems health workers face. He told ABC News he is one of only 15 surgeons left in Aleppo and that his hospital has been targeted more than 10 times.
War planes belonging to Russia and the Syrian regime have targeted rebel-held areas of Aleppo. But Russia, which began its military operations against ISIS and other militant groups in the Middle Eastern nation last September, denied reports that it launched the bombing raid in Aleppo that injured Omran and killed his older brother.
"We have repeatedly stressed that the current Russian planes never work on targets within the boundaries of settlements in the Syrian Arab Republic," Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Major-General Igor Konashenkov said in a statement Friday.
Konashenkov said footage of Omar's rescue showed "the nature of the damage" of the building, with a window of a neighboring structure intact, which indicated that the area was not hit by an airstrike but potentially a rebel mine or a bomb made from a gas cylinder.
ABC News' Molly Hunter and Lena Masri contributed to this report.
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