A woman’s face and clothes are a deathly white from the dust of a building wrecked by an air strike, save for the stream of blood flowing from her head wound.
A father’s loving arms hold a young child tightly as yet another family is shaken to its core by the trauma of Syria’s brutal crisis. These harrowing pictures have just been taken by Islamic Relief staff in Aleppo, Syria’s largest city, where over 130 people have been killed in the past week as hostilities have resumed. The dead included five volunteer rescue workers who were trying to save lives, and 14 patients and medical staff in a hospital that came under fire. The medics included Aleppo’s last surviving paediatrician, Mohammad Wassim Muadh, described by a nurse who worked with him as “the definition of humanity and kindness”. Islamic Relief has joined over 80 other humanitarian organisations in strongly condemning the renewed violence, and calling for the recently negotiated ceasefire to be restored.
We are there on the ground as we have been throughout the crisis, standing alongside the Syrian people and supporting them in their hour of need. Thanks in part to Islamic Relief, Aleppo’s makeshift hospitals are doing their best to operate on the severely injured and treat the wounded. Additionally, in the last few weeks Islamic Relief delivered several shipments of medical equipment, emergency medical supplies and medicines to various hospitals and medical points inside Aleppo in anticipation to the expected increased number of casualties from the air strikes. Additionally, our monthly food distribution inside Aleppo is still ongoing and we’ve just finished distributing 2,400 food parcels one week ago. Aleppo is just one of many places throughout Syria where there is still extreme suffering despite the ceasefire agreement. The UN reports that conditions in the notorious Yarmouk displaced camp are worsening, for example, and this week UN humanitarian chief Stephen O’Brien warned that “current levels of access still leave civilians starving and without medical care.” In this time of crisis, please do what you can to continue to support those in desperate need by supporting our Syria Appeal