After more than five years of war, Syrians appear to be using the wildly popular Pokémon Go in a desperate effort to draw attention to their country’s conflict. 
 
 A Facebook page affiliated with the Syrian opposition posted images on Wednesday claiming to show young Syrian children in the area of Idlib, in northern Syria. They’re holding paper signs with pictures of Pokemon characters, and calling on people to save them. 
 
 “I am in Kafr Nabl on the outskirts of Idlib, come and save me,” one sign says, echoing phrases on a handful of others. “I am in Kafr Zeta, save me,” one reads. “I am Kafr Nabouda, save me,” urges another. 
 
 https://twitter.com/syria_children/status/755896915854843905 
 
 It’s unclear who, or what group, was behind the images. But they bear the logo of the RFS, which is self-described online as the Revolutionary Forces of Syria Media Office that “reports on the Syrian revolution professionally and objectively,” according to its Twitter account. It appears to be affiliated with the Syrian opposition. The images were also circulated by other accounts affiliated with the opposition, which has been fighting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his regime since 2011. 
 
 “I never imagined we would like to become a game in order to gain the world’s attention,” a Twitter account called Children of Syria posted on Wednesday, with the pictures of the children. 
 
 The effort specifically sought to draw attention to the situation in the vicinity of Idlib, a rebel-held city in northeastern Syria that has been hit heavily by regime-led airstrikes. On Wednesday, the same day the images of the children holding the posters were circulated, Sky News Arabia reported that more than 50 people were killed by airstrikes in the city within the last 24 hours. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on its website that warplanes struck neighborhoods in eight raids, and helicopters dropped explosive barrels on Tuesday in two towns in the southern countryside of Idlib. 
 
 It’s just one area suffering from ongoing combat. UNICEF said it estimates 35,000 children are trapped in and around the Syrian city of Manbij, about 100 miles northeast of Idlib. “In the past six weeks, and as violence has intensified, over 2,300 people were reportedly killed in the area, among them dozens of children,” UNICEF said in a statement on Wednesday. A video that surfaced this week showed a 12-year-old boy brutally beheaded near Aleppo. 
 
 In April, a U.N. special envoy for Syria said some 400,000 people have died in the conflict since it started in 2011. 
 
 More Syrian Refugees Congratulate Turkish President Erdogan 
 
 In another Pokémon-focused initiative aimed at grabbing attention, Syrian artist Saif Aldeen Tahhan posted images last week on his Facebook account showing six images of Poké Balls pictured with symbols of what Syrians need after years of war: homes, first aid kits, school books, and life rafts for Syrian refugees. 
 
 “The world is buzzing with this game, and I told myself, why not show our pain?” Tahhan told Al Arabiya. “They are looking for the Pokémon, but the Syrian people are looking for how to live right now.” 
 
 According to Al Arabiya, Tahhan left Syria for Denmark a year and a half ago. ||||| A campaign involving children in Syrian villages has latched on to the Pokémon Go craze, asking gamers in the west to take a break from their frenzied hunt for digital creatures to turn their attention to young people trapped in war zones. 
 
 Several children have been photographed holding up printouts with popular Pokémon characters, a location in the heart of Syria and a message to “come save me”. 
 
 The pictures were shared by an online news service, the Revolutionary Forces of Syria Media Office. It did not respond to requests for comment on the origins of the photos or organisers of the campaign. 
 
 إعلام قوى الثورة (@RFS_mediaoffice) #PrayForSyria 
 
 Save me !! I am in #Syria pic.twitter.com/26Tg5RUuUn 
 
 The locations given are near the cities of Hama and Idlib, which have seen years of heavy fighting and aerial bombardment and are currently held by forces opposed to the president, Bashar al-Assad. 
 
 إعلام قوى الثورة (@RFS_mediaoffice) #PrayForSyria 
 
 I am from Kafer-Nabodah #Hama #Syria come & save me !! #PokemonGo pic.twitter.com/fUEMFGPm1s 
 
 Another image shows a child next to a weeping superimposed Pikachu in a bombed-out building, as if it were a screenshot from the actual game. 
 
 إعلام قوى الثورة (@RFS_mediaoffice) #PrayForSyria 
 
 I am from #Syria come to save me!!! pic.twitter.com/lRbSlGsWrB 
 
 Pokémon Go’s augmented reality technology projects digital creatures on to the streets around a player as viewed on a smartphone. 
 
 It has proved enormously popular, sometimes dangerously so as players staring at their screens have paid little heed to the real world they are moving through. 
 
 Players in Bosnia have been urged to avoid areas littered with unexploded mines left over from the 1990s conflict, and Indonesian police detained a French man who trespassed on a military base while playing the game. 
 
 There have been a string of reports of less dramatic problems across America: one woman got stuck in a tree in a New Jersey cemetery, a Baltimore man drove into a police car, and a man in New Hampshire was robbed at knifepoint. 
 
 The game’s popularity has also provoked religious controversy, with Saudi Arabia’s top clerical body reviving a 2001 religious edict prohibiting Pokémon. ||||| A Facebook post said to be written by the 11-year-old son of the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, and “liked” or commented on by several people who appear to be the children and grandchildren of other senior members of Mr. Assad’s government, may offer a glimpse into the mindset of Syria’s ruling elite as the country braces for a potential Western strike in response to a chemical weapons attack on Aug. 21. 
 
 Photo 
 
 It is impossible to confirm whether the Facebook account does, in fact, belong to the son, Hafez al-Assad, and aspects of it invite doubt. For example, the owner of the account wrote that he was a graduate of Oxford University and a player for a Barcelona soccer team, neither of which would be likely to appear on the résumé of an 11-year-old boy in Damascus. But those claims could also be read as the ambitions of a child, and there are reasons to believe that the account may actually belong to Hafez. 
 
 The owner of the account wrote that he was a graduate of a Montessori school in Damascus, a detail of the Assad children’s lives that Vogue magazine reported in a February 2011 profile of their mother, Asma al-Assad. That article portrayed them as typical suburban children who played with remote control cars and watched Tim Burton movies on an iMac as they lounged around the family home, described as running “on wildly democratic principles.” It has since been removed from the Vogue Web site, but Joshua Landis, a well-known scholar of Syrian politics, posted a copy to his blog. 
 
 Perhaps most significantly, the Facebook post said to have been written by Hafez al-Assad has been “liked” or commented on by several accounts that appear to belong to the children or grandchildren of other senior figures in the Assad administration. Among them are accounts that seemingly belong to two children of Deputy Vice President Mohammed Nassif Khierbek, Ali and Sally, and to three children of a former deputy defense minister, Assef Shawkat, who was killed in a bombing in July 2012. 
 
 The accounts said to belong to the children of Mr. Shawkat — one of his sons, Bassel, and two of his daughters, Anisseh and Boushra — appeared to be authentic, according to a Syrian journalist from Damascus who has extensive knowledge of the country’s ruling elite and spoke on condition of anonymity, citing safety concerns. Mr. Shawkat was married to the sister of Bashar al-Assad, making these three children cousins of Mr. Assad’s son Hafez, who is believed to be the author of the Facebook post. 
 
 Many of the people who commented on the post had changed their profile pictures to show portraits of the Syrian leader or his father, also named Hafez, who ruled the country for three decades before Bashar al-Assad took power in 2000. Several of them referenced the author’s relationship to the two President Assads. One referred to the author by a diminutive and familiar nickname, “Hafouz,” and complimented him for his strength and intelligence, writing that such a feat was unsurprising for the son and grandson of the past two presidents. Another commenter wrote: “Like father like son! Well said future President!” 
 
 Photo 
 
 Photo 
 
 If the Facebook post attributed to Mr. Assad’s son is a hoax, it is either a highly elaborate one involving dozens of fake accounts purporting to belong to the children of other regime insiders, or a forgery so impressive that some of those children themselves — including the boy’s cousins — have been fooled. 
 
 Regardless of its provenance, the post appears to illustrate the mindset of Mr. Assad’s core supporters, who have stood by him through more than two years of a grinding war that has killed more than 100,000 Syrians and caused millions more to flee their homes. 
 
 The post is riddled with spelling and grammatical errors that would not be unusual for a child, and it may offer a glimpse into the way the country’s leaders — or, at the very least, Mr. Assad’s supporters — speak to one another and to their families as the specter of foreign military intervention looms. 
 
 Judging from the post, supporters of Mr. Assad do not appear to be particularly afraid of the United States. 
 
 “They may have the best army in the world, maybe the best airplanes, ships, tanks than ours, but soldiers? No one has soldiers like the ones we do in Syria,” the post’s author wrote of the United States military. “America doesn’t have soldiers, what it has is some cowards with new technology who claim themselves liberators.” 
 
 The author then compared the potential American airstrikes to the 2006 war between Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, a close ally of the Assad regime in the current conflict. Many in the Arab world saw Hezbollah as the victor of the 2006 clash. 
 
 “I just want them to attack sooo much, because I want them to make this huge mistake of beginning something that they don’t know the end of it,” he wrote. “What did Hezbollah have back then? Some street fighters and some small rockets and a pile of guns, but they had belief, In theirselves and in their country and that’s exactly what’s gonna happen to America if it chooses invasion because they don’t know our land like we do, no one does, victory is ours in the end no matter how much time it takes.” ||||| Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption The BBC's Jim Muir meets the Syrian children who do not officially exist 
 
 UN agencies say the number of children forced to flee Syria has reached one million, describing the figure as "a shameful milestone". 
 
 The UN's refugee agency and Unicef say a further two million children are displaced within the country. 
 
 More than 100,000 people have been killed in the conflict, according to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. 
 
 He has also called for an investigation "without delay" into the recent alleged chemical weapons attack near Damascus. 
 
 Activists say hundreds were killed in Wednesday's attack, and Mr Ban is sending disarmament chief Angela Kane to Damascus to press for an investigation, his spokesman Eduardo del Buey said on Thursday. 
 
 Russia - Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's main ally - on Friday urged Syrian rebels to ensure that a UN team already in the country had safe access to the site of the alleged attack. 
 
 'Traumatised' 
 
 The UN says children now make up half of all refugees fleeing Syria. About three-quarters of those children are under 11. 
 
 "The youth of Syria are losing their homes, their family members and their futures," said UN high commissioner for refugees Antonio Guterres. 
 
 "Even after they have crossed a border to safety, they are traumatised, depressed and in need of a reason for hope," he said. 
 
 Most of the children have arrived in Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, Iraq and Egypt, the UN says, and increasingly Syrians are fleeing to North Africa and Europe. 
 
 But with its appeal for Syria less than 40% funded, the two UN agencies say they are struggling to meet the needs of the refugees. 
 
 Just 118,000 of the refugee children have been able to continue in some sort of education, and a fifth have received psychosocial counselling. 
 
 The BBC's Imogen Foulkes in Geneva says the agencies are now warning of a lost generation that are ill-equipped to bring peace and stability to their country in the future. 
 
 "We must all share the shame," said Unicef executive director Anthony Lake, "because while we work to alleviate the suffering of those affected by this crisis, the global community has failed in its responsibility to this child. 
 
 "We should stop and ask ourselves how, in all conscience, we can continue to fail the children of Syria." 
 
 Roger Hearn, Save the Children's regional director for the Middle East, added: "It is appalling that the world has stood and watched as one million children have been forced from their country, terrified, traumatised and in some cases orphaned." 
 
 The UN says the conflict in Syria has caused the world's worst refugee crisis for 20 years, with numbers not seen since the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. 
 
 Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Syrian refugees have also swamped the border crossing into Iraqi Kurdistan, Jim Muir reports 
 
 It says more than 1.7million people have registered as refugees since the uprising against the rule of President Assad began in March 2011. 
 
 More than 40,000 Syrians have poured over the border of Iraqi Kurdistan since a new wave of arrivals began in the region a week ago. 
 
 Shocking footage 
 
 Speaking of the alleged chemical attack, Mr Ban said: "Any use of chemical weapons anywhere, by anybody, under any circumstances, would violate international law. Such a crime against humanity should result in serious consequences for the perpetrator." 
 
 Mr Ban has asked the Syrian government to let UN weapons inspectors, who are already in the country, investigate the allegations. 
 
 Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon: "Chemical weapons... would violate international law" 
 
 "I can think of no good reason why any party - either government or opposition forces - would decline this opportunity to get to the truth of the matter," Mr Ban said from the South Korean capital, Seoul. 
 
 The inspection team currently only has a mandate to visit three previously agreed sites, including the northern town of Khan al-Assal, where some 26 people were killed in an alleged chemical attack in March. 
 
 There is no sign yet that Damascus will allow the team to extend its mission, and Syrian adviser Bassam Abu Abdullah told the BBC he believed it would not be allowed to visit the site. 
 
 Dr Bassam said the chemical attack was carried out by what he called a terrorist group, to prevent a military operation by the Syrian army. 
 
 The government earlier described the allegations that it sanctioned the use of chemical weapons as "illogical and fabricated". 
 
 But unverified footage shows civilians - many of them children - apparently suffering horrific symptoms, as well as rows of shrouded bodies. 
 
 Chemical weapons experts have told the BBC that footage appears genuine and that the injuries shown are consistent with nerve agents. 
 
 International clamour over the alleged chemical attacks has continued to grow. 
 
 French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius warned that France must react "with force" if the use of chemical weapons was confirmed. 
 
 The US state department said it was urgently gathering information to try to determine what had taken place in Damascus.
– Children in war-torn Syria are holding pictures of Pokemon in the hopes the rest of the world, currently obsessing over Pokemon Go, will take notice, the Independent reports. According to Vocativ, photos of the children started circulating online Wednesday, the same day airstrikes in the city of Idlib killed more than 50 people. In addition to pictures of Pokemon, the children's signs bear messages like "I am here, come save me" along with their location. Most of the children appear to be near Idlib and another city, Hama, the Guardian reports. Those cities have seen years of fighting between the Syrian government and opposition forces. “I never imagined we would like to become a game in order to gain the world’s attention,” Vocativ quotes a Twitter account called Children of Syria. The photos originally appeared on a Facebook page belonging to the Revolutionary Forces of Syria, and they bear that opposition group's logo. They have also been circulated by other groups connected to the opposition against Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. It's possible they are simply meant as propaganda. If that's the case, they are effective attention-getters. “The world is buzzing with this game,” Vocativ quotes a Syrian artist who is also using Pokemon Go to draw attention to Syria. “They are looking for the Pokemon, but the Syrian people are looking for how to live right now.” Syria's children are in a desperate situation. UNICEF says 35,000 children are trapped in the city of Manbij alone and dozens more have been killed there in recent weeks.