Russia: Rebels behind Aleppo attack that wounded young boy

MOSCOW — Russia on Friday denied responsibility for an attack on a neighborhood in the Syrian city of Aleppo that wounded a young boy whose rescue was filmed and shared widely on social media. Moscow instead said the bombing was carried out by Syrian rebels seeking to overthrow the Assad regime.

The image of the 5-year-old stunned boy, sitting in an ambulance caked with dust and with blood on his face, captured the horror that has beset the war-torn city.

The Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement it never targets populated areas and that rebels themselves hit urban areas in order to derail humanitarian efforts there.

The ministry also said the footage of the boy’s rescue showed windows in the house next door intact, indicating that the boy’s house was not targeted by an airstrike but was hit with a mine that rebels use.

But according to accounts from doctors and opposition activists, the boy was hit in an airstrike. Apart from the coalition of Western countries, only Russia and the Russia-backed Syrian army have access to fighter jets.

A doctor in Aleppo identified the child as Omran Daqneesh. He was brought to the hospital, known as “M10,” on Wednesday night, said Dr. Osama Abu al-Ezz. The boy suffered head wounds but no brain injury, and was later discharged.

“I’ve seen so many children rescued out of the rubble, but this child, with his innocence, he had no clue what was going on,” Sarout said.

Scenes like the airstrike Wednesday night that wounded Omran are commonplace in Aleppo, where 233 civilians were killed in indiscriminate exchanges of fire between rebels and government forces in the first two weeks of August alone, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group.

“It’s taxing, emotionally,” said Mahmoud Abu Rajad, a nurse who treated Omran. “Sometimes, you have to cry. Once, there were three children — both their parents had died — and they were just standing in front of us.”

Doctors in Aleppo use code names for hospitals, which they say have been systematically targeted by government airstrikes. “We are afraid security forces will infiltrate our medical network and target ambulances as they transfer patients from one hospital to another,” Abu al-Ezz said.

Activists living in opposition areas rely on informants in government-controlled Latakia province to warn residents of impending airstrikes. On Wednesday evening, an informant relayed word of a warplane taking off from the Russian air base at Hmeimim.

“We expected the plane to arrive in Aleppo airspace in two minutes, and sure enough it did,” said photojournalist Mahmoud Raslan, who took the dramatic photo of Omran. “It struck twice.”

No one was injured in the first strike, he said. The second one turned little Omran’s life upside down.

Rescue workers and journalists arrived shortly after the strike and described pulling victims from the rubble.

“We were passing them from one balcony to the other,” Raslan said. He said he had passed along three lifeless bodies when someone handed him the wounded boy. Raslan gave the child to a rescue worker, who rushed him to the ambulance.

Eight people died in the strike, including five children, according to a doctor who gave only his first name, Abo Mohammadian. Many doctors working in Aleppo’s opposition areas do not give their full names for fear of reprisals against their relatives in government areas.

An hour after his rescue, the badly damaged building the boy was in completely collapsed.

A nurse who treated Omran said “he was in a daze.”

“It was as if he was asleep. Not unconscious, but traumatized — lost,” said Mahmoud Abu Rajab.

— Times of Israel staff contributed to this report