A video from besieged eastern Aleppo has shown the moment a young girl, trapped beneath rubble following a deadly bomb attack, is rescued by the Syria Civil Defence, better known as the white helmets.

The footage shows the emergency workers breaking through a wall with a drill to access part of the five floor building blown to smithereens by pro-Assad bombs. At first nothing can be seen of the young girl, identified as Ghazal Qasim, covered in dust and trapped under huge pieces of rubble.

As White Helmets start removing the pieces of debris from around Ghazal she can be heard screaming violently. Her reaction when she is removed on an orange stretcher and touched on the leg would seem to imply it was broken.

As she is torn from the rubble, the pink tracksuit she was wearing at the time of the bombing can just be seen through the thick dust. With her eyes closed and her mouth slightly open Ghazal only moves to scream when she is knocked.

In images which have been uncomfortably familiar, as Ghazal is brought into the light of the outside world like Omran Daqneesh whose pictures shocked the world, she is as grey as the bombed-out buildings that surround her.

Activists have claimed in unconfirmed media reports that Ghazal was the sole survivor of the wreckage. The video of her rescue from the building lasts just under five minutes but the white helmets have said they were digging for four hours to rescue her.

A local activist alleged that bunker buster bombs were used in the attack to destroy buildings in Aleppo's al-Shaar neighbourhood on Tuesday 27 September.

1 of 7

The video emerges as the international community and human rights groups condemn unprecedented violence in eastern Aleppo where the Syrian government and its Russian and Iranian backers appear to be pursuing an end game. In the aftermath of a seven-day-long ceasefire across Syria the Assad regime vowed that it would retake all territory lost over the course of the country's six-year civil war.

The UN's children's charity UNICEF has called the effect of the war in Aleppo on children as the worst seen since the conflict began. At least 96 children have been killed and 223 have been injured in Eastern Aleppo since Friday, UNICEF said.

"The children of Aleppo are trapped in a living nightmare," said UNICEF Deputy Executive Director Justin Forsyth said in a statement. "There are no words left to describe the suffering they are experiencing."

The health system in Eastern Aleppo is crumbling with some 30 doctors left, hardly any equipment or emergency medicine to treat the injured, and an ever-increasing number of trauma cases.</s>BEIRUT | With international diplomacy in tatters and the U.S. focused on its election, the Syrian government and its Russian allies are seizing the moment to wage an all-out campaign to recapture Aleppo, unleashing the most destructive bombing of the past five years and pushing into the center of the Old City.

Desperate residents describe horrific scenes in Syria’s largest city and onetime commercial center, with hospitals and underground shelters hit by indiscriminate airstrikes that the U.N. said may amount to a war crime.

File-This Sept. 21, 2016, file photo shows Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, right, meeting United Nations General Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, left, at U.N. headquarters. The failed attempt by the U.S. and Russia to revive a cease-fire in Syria stole the spotlight at the annual U.N. gathering of world leaders but every other global hotspot had its moment _ and there were some chuckles as well including a message to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to be ready to receive his gift from South Sudan of a "white bull."(AP Photo/Mary Altaffer, File) In this photo provided by the Syrian Civil Defense group known as the White Helmets, Syrians carry a victim after airstrikes by government helicopters on the rebel-held Aleppo neighborhood of Mashhad, Syria, Tuesday Sept. 27, 2016. With diplomacy in tatters and a month left to go before U.S. elections, the Syrian government and its Russian allies are using the time to try and recapture the northern city of Aleppo, mobilizing pro-government militias in the Old City and pressing ahead with the most destructive aerial campaign of the past five years. (Syrian Civil Defense White Helmets via AP) In this photo provided by the Syrian Civil Defense group known as the White Helmets, Syrians inspect damaged buildings after airstrikes by government helicopters on the rebel-held Aleppo neighborhood of Mashhad, Syria, Tuesday Sept. 27, 2016. With diplomacy in tatters and a month left to go before U.S. elections, the Syrian government and its Russian allies are using the time to try and recapture the northern city of Aleppo, mobilizing pro-government militias in the Old City and pressing ahead with the most destructive aerial campaign of the past five years. (Syrian Civil Defense White Helmets via AP)

Debris covers streets lined with bombed-out buildings, trapping people in their neighborhoods and hindering rescue workers. On Tuesday, activists reported at least 23 people killed in airstrikes on two districts in the rebel-held part of Aleppo.

The battle for Aleppo is unlikely to be an easy one for government forces because the isolated rebels say they are determined to “fight until the end” to defend their neighborhoods. Insurgents outside the city could also attack government troops to try to reduce pressure on comrades trapped inside.

If government forces and their allies capture the rebel-held eastern neighborhoods, it would be a turning point in the 5½-year-old civil war that has killed more than 250,000 people and displaced half of Syria’s population.

Over the course of the conflict, the government has slowly regained control of major cities. Its aim appears to be securing what some analysts call “useful Syria” — a portion containing the four largest cities of Aleppo, Damascus, Homs and Hama, along with its Mediterranean coast.

Aleppo is the last of the major cities still being contested, and it could take government forces between six months and a year to capture it, unless they aim to “annihilate” the politically significant city, a Western diplomat told The Associated Press. The envoy, who is familiar with the cease-fire talks that have faltered, spoke on condition of anonymity because of his government’s regulations.

Once all of “useful Syria” is in government hands, international diplomacy would have to determine the fate of the jihadi-controlled northwest and those areas dominated by the main Kurdish militia and the Islamic State militant group.

President Bashar Assad “doesn’t want a negotiation,” the diplomat said, adding that “the Russians wouldn’t or couldn’t stop him” from attacking Aleppo.

In Russia, Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov told Syria’s ambassador that Moscow has “a firm intention to continue providing assistance to the Syrian government in fighting terrorism and to help achieve the soonest possible political settlement of the Syrian crisis.”

Opposition forces control almost half of Aleppo, the only major city where rebels hold such a large area. The U.N. says more than 250,000 people live in the rebel-held areas, while more than 1 million are in the government-controlled part that is usually subjected to shelling.

Assad’s government controls the capital of Damascus, except for two small neighborhoods. It also controls all of Homs and Hama, the third- and fourth-largest cities.

Since the one-week cease-fire brokered by Russia and the U.S. ended Sept. 19, Aleppo has been under intense Russian and Syrian airstrikes, killing more than 200 civilians, knocking down entire buildings, disrupting water supplies and targeting Civil Defense centers. At least one of the eight remaining clinics in the city was put out of service.

Had the cease-fire held, the U.S. and Russia were supposed to announce the establishment of a Joint Implementation Center to coordinate attacks against the Islamic State group and al-Qaida’s affiliate in Syria, formerly known as the Nusra Front.

Attempts to revive the cease-fire during the U.N. General Assembly failed, and U.S. Ambassador Samantha Powers harshly criticized Russia, saying Moscow was practicing “barbarism.”

Hilal Khashan, political science professor at the American University of Beirut, said the decision to escalate the fighting occurred because Russia believes the U.S. has not been forthcoming in cooperating on coordinated attacks against the Nusra Front.

Last week, the Syrian army ordered civilians to stay away from rebel positions, saying a ground offensive would begin. On Tuesday, government forces captured the rebel-held central neighborhood of Farafra near the Old City.

Residents are stunned by the intensity of the bombing on areas that have seen a sharp increase in food prices due to the siege, which tightened earlier this month.

Ibrahim Alhaj, a member of the Syrian Civil Defense, said his parents’ house was shelled, and he was able to save them only because he lives nearby.

Assad “listens to no one — not the United Nations, not anyone,” a desperate and exhausted Alhaj said. “Is there no humanity in this world?”

Clinics have been flooded with casualties in the past week. Many had to be treated on white-tiled floors covered with blood.

Online amateur video showed people running to the site of the airstrikes, screaming the names of their relatives as they searched for them.

Several thousand rebels from different factions are believed holed up in eastern Aleppo, with the largest being the Nour el-Din el-Zinki group.

“The regime and its allies know very well the high price they will pay if they try to storm liberated Aleppo,” said Yasser Alyousef, a spokesman for the group, referring to the rebel-held sector. “The rebels have become experts in street warfare and ways to drain the enemy.”

Residents, fearing further targeting, deny the presence of any al-Qaida-affiliated fighters inside the besieged area.

Brita Hassan Haj, head of the Aleppo council in the area, said the government’s aim was to drive residents out. On Monday, 25 of eastern Aleppo’s 63 neighborhoods were bombed, he said.

“Bunker-buster bombs are penetrating underground shelters, leaving no one safe,” he said. “The main roads are closed, the civil defense can’t operate, and people are dying. … It is like judgment day.”

The leader of Lebanon’s Hezbollah group, which has thousands of gunmen in Syria fighting alongside Assad’s troops, was quoted by Lebanese newspapers Tuesday as saying: “There are no solutions (for Syria) on the horizon. It will be decided on the battlefield.”

Associated Press writers Albert Aji in Damascus, Syria, and Vladimir Isachenkov in Moscow contributed.</s>In this photo provided by the Syrian Civil Defense group known as the White Helmets, Syrians inspect damaged buildings after airstrikes by government helicopters on the rebel-held Aleppo neighborhood of Mashhad, Syria, Tuesday. With diplomacy in tatters and a month left to go before U.S. elections, the Syrian government and its Russian allies are using the time to try and recapture the northern city of Aleppo, mobilizing pro-government militias in the Old City and pressing ahead with the most destructive aerial campaign of the past five years. (Syrian Civil Defense White Helmets via AP)</s>In this photo provided by the Syrian Civil Defense group known as the White Helmets, Syrians inspect damaged buildings after airstrikes by government helicopters on the rebel-held Aleppo neighborhood of Mashhad, Syria, Tuesday. With diplomacy in tatters and a month left to go before U.S. elections, the Syrian government and its Russian allies are using the time to try and recapture the northern city of Aleppo, mobilizing pro-government militias in the Old City and pressing ahead with the most destructive aerial campaign of the past five years. (Syrian Civil Defense White Helmets via AP)</s>Video: Watch as a five-year-old girl is rescued from rubble in Aleppo

The girl is rescued under the rubble in besieged Aleppo, Syria, under bombardment from air strikes</s>BEIRUT — Syrian government forces continued their push into rebel-held districts of Aleppo on Thursday as international officials issued dire warnings of an ongoing humanitarian disaster in Syria’s largest city.

The U.N.’s humanitarian chief Stephen O’Brien told the Security Council that the conditions in eastern Aleppo, which is besieged and assaulted by all sides by government forces, had descended into the “merciless abyss of humanitarian catastrophe.”

Speaking to the Security Council via video link from Geneva, O’Brien painted a grim picture of the conditions in the war-wracked eastern part of the city, where at least 320 civilians including 100 children have been killed in the past week. An additional 765 have been wounded.

O’Brien’s report noted that the U.N. now calculates that 861,200 Syrians are trapped in sieges — a nearly 50 percent increase from the last estimate of 586,200. The new figure reflects the government’s protracted blockade around eastern Aleppo, where an estimated 250,000 people or more live.

Most of the besieged citizens, divided across at least 18 locations around the country, are trapped by government forces, and international observers are beginning to accuse both Damascus and its close ally Moscow of war crimes.

The U.N. embarked on an ambitious plan early this year to establish regular humanitarian access to Syrians living under various sieges but was reportedly stymied by the government as well as a restrictive covenant between rebels and the government to limit assistance to 60,000 of the most distressed, divided among four towns. At that time, a total of 487,000 Syrians were estimated to be living under siege.

O’Brien said certain Security Council members bore responsibility for global inaction on Syria and ended his address saying it was time to “place the blame.”

In Aleppo, rescue crews were working for the third straight day to clear the rubble and search for survivors of presumed Russian or Syrian government airstrikes on the eastern al-Shaar and al-Mashhad neighborhoods that flattened residential buildings and killed at least 23 civilians, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Germany and Turkey condemned what they called “blatant breaches of international humanitarian law” and renewed calls for a cease-fire.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who spoke by phone Thursday, said Russia, the Syrian government’s chief backer on the international stage, bears “special responsibility to calm the violence and thereby give any chance to a political process,” according to a statement released by Merkel’s office.

The White House said Thursday that Merkel also spoke with U.S. President Barack Obama by phone as well, and both agreed that Russia and the Syrian regime “bear special responsibility for ending the fighting in Syria and granting the U.N. humanitarian access to besieged and hard to reach areas in Syria.”

Meanwhile, airstrikes destroyed the last remaining bakery in Anadan, an opposition town north of Aleppo, activists said.

Adnan Medlej, an activist from Anadan, said the bakery was hit shortly after it distributed bread to the town’s remaining 2,000 residents and others in nearby villages. After intense bombings that devastated the town’s infrastructure, most residents have fled to other areas in rural Aleppo province.

A video shot by Medlej shows the bakery destroyed and a crater outside, with water leaking and walls scorched.

On Wednesday, government shelling near a bread distribution center in Aleppo city killed six people.

Meanwhile the U.S. and Russia escalated their war of words over the catastrophe as government forces kept up their assault on Aleppo’s rebel-held quarters.

Government forces seized the Handarat neighborhood along the contested city’s northern flank, forcing rebels to withdraw further from a crucial supply route to the city’s east, the Castello Road, pro-government media and observers said. A government blockade of the road has kept the opposition-run east under siege since mid-July, with the exception of a month-long period where rebels broke through the government’s southern line.

But gains have proven ephemeral in the battle for Aleppo: government forces captured Handarat last Saturday, only to surrender it again Sunday.

Syria’s military also released a video purporting to show a freshly captured neighborhood in the city’s historic center.

The video shows damaged traditional buildings, with arched ceilings and stone walls, in the Farafra neighborhood which rests at the foot of the city’s towering central citadel. Soldiers and allied militants are seen walking past mounds of debris, twisted metal bars, and caved-in ceilings. The government claimed it expelled rebels from the front-line neighborhood Tuesday.

A top Russian diplomat meanwhile called a U.S. threat to halt cooperation with Russia in the Syria conflict an “emotional breakdown” and said Russia is willing to support a 48-hour cease-fire around Aleppo.

Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov on Thursday rejected Washington’s calls for a seven-day pause in hostilities, but said Russia is willing to support a 48-hour truce for humanitarian purposes.

Damascus blocked assistance from reaching eastern Aleppo during a week-long cease-fire which collapsed earlier this month.</s>Stripped down to the most heart-wrenching imagery, the trailer for the Netflix-produced documentary The White Helmets is undeniably powerful. Backed by a haunting and disembodied rendition of When the Saints Go Marching In, it is a spine-chilling two minute-and-eighteen-second glimpse into a devastating war, peppered with moments of both tragedy ND triumph.

The saints, in this case, are a group of volunteers reportedly made up of everyday Syrians—construction workers, barbers, shopkeepers—who have been risking their lives since 2013 in rebel-controlled areas of Syria, rescuing civilians from the brutal bombing campaign of the regime and its Russian ally. They are technically known as the Syria Civil Defence, popularly called the White Helmets because of the white hard hats they don.

But not everyone believes they are who they claim to be. Over the last week, Syrian and Russian warplanes have wreaked havoc on the White Helmets. “They have bombed all four of our centres in Aleppo city,” Ismail Alabdullah, a 28-year-old volunteer and former English major at Aleppo University, tells Maclean’s by telephone. “Ambulances have been destroyed, rescue equipment. One of our centres was destroyed completely.”

Simultaneously, a Canadian organization has launched a scathing attack on them, accusing the White Helmets of being “terrorists” and a “propaganda arm” of the U.S., U.K., and Israel. The Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), based in Montreal, accuses the group of faking rescue operations and embedding with al-Qaeda and Islamic State militants. In recent weeks, its website, globalresearch.ca, has published more than a half dozen articles claiming to “uncover” the deceit behind White Helmet operations, including an open letter by a retired University of Winnipeg geography professor calling on the NDP government to backtrack on its call to award the White Helmets the Nobel Prize.

The media blitz appears to be linked to a major regime offensive after a ceasefire agreement brokered by Russia and the U.S. collapsed in mid-September. The deal was meant to give aid organizations a chance to reach civilians trapped in rebel-controlled parts of Syria, where the White Helmets operate. Its demise has led to a looming humanitarian catastrophe, the WHO has warned, as regime and Russian jets target the last remaining vestiges of civilian support left in the most vulnerable parts of Syria.

What is behind the CRG’s campaign? Disparaging the last line of defence civilians have against certain death feels like a very un-Canadian thing to do, but Michel Chossudovsky, professor emeritus of economics at the University of Ottawa and the founder of the CRG, is unapologetic. “I haven’t investigated the White Helmets personally,” he says, “but we are dealing with a lot of mainstream media lies. The White Helmets operate solely in al-Qaeda protected areas. That’s certainly an observation we can make and something that gets no attention in the mainstream media.”

His allegations are only partly true. According to journalists and aid workers who have been on the ground in rebel-controlled Syria, no one group, outside of Islamic State and the Kurds, dominates any single region. The complexity and fluidity of alliances between a vast array of militias, some extremist and others moderate, renders sweeping statements like “al-Qaeda protected areas” meaningless.

Jake Simkin, a photojournalist based in Turkey who has spent months at a time embedded with the White Helmets in rebel-held east Aleppo, explains: “If the accusation is that the White Helmets work with ‘terrorists,’ then it would have to be yes to a certain degree,” he says. “They have to negotiate access [to al-Qaeda-held neighbourhoods] to be able to save civilians. As they have a humanitarian agenda, they are allowed that access. The group I have been with has assisted wounded Shiite militias and government soldiers who were trapped in destroyed buildings so they could surrender and be sent back into government areas. The reason the White Helmets were formed was because the Syrian Red Crescent is often not allowed humanitarian access into opposition-held Syria. No humanitarian aid travels from the capital towards the opposition. It has been one of the tactics the government has used to make the rebel held areas surrender their arms.”

From the perspective of some White Helmet critics, however, there are few if any civilians in rebel-controlled Syria, only “terrorists.” The broad brushstroke echoes Russia’s and the Syrian regime’s narrative, which has used the terrorist label to justify their atrocities.

In some instances, CRG provides sound insight into some of the world’s most troubling issues, marshalling a respectable flock of international experts to its cause (albeit almost exclusively from the political left). In other cases, however, it slips dangerously into the surreal world of secretive cabals and conspiracies, and in the case of Syria it seems to go off the rails.

Reports published on its website rely on sources in regime-controlled areas. In one article, the author quotes civilians in Tartous, far from rebel-held territory, who claim that they know the White Helmets are “terrorists.”

Chossudovsky argues, not without some justification, that western nations have backed “terrorists” in their bid to topple another Middle Eastern regime. But expanding that accusation and labelling as terrorists others who oppose Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, including a group of civilians whose sole purpose is saving lives, at the very least needs to be challenged: where is the proof?</s>In this photo provided by the Syrian Civil Defense group known as the White Helmets, Syrians inspect damaged buildings after airstrikes by government helicopters on the rebel-held Aleppo neighborhood of Mashhad, Syria, Tuesday Sept. 27, 2016. A year after Russia waded into the war in Syria, aiming to flex its national security muscles and prop up beleaguered Syrian President Bashar Assad, Moscow appears no closer to one of its military goals: getting the U.S. to coordinate combat operations in the civil war. And prospects of a diplomatic resolution seem dim. (Syrian Civil Defense White Helmets via AP)</s>In this photo provided by the Syrian Civil Defense group known as the White Helmets, Syrians carry a victim after airstrikes by government helicopters on the rebel-held Aleppo neighborhood of Mashhad, Syria, Tuesday Sept. 27, 2016. With diplomacy in tatters and a month left to go before U.S. elections, the Syrian government and its Russian allies are using the time to try and recapture the northern city of Aleppo, mobilizing pro-government militias in the Old City and pressing ahead with the most destructive aerial campaign of the past five years. (Syrian Civil Defense White Helmets via AP)

BEIRUT (AP) — Government shelling and airstrikes in Syria's eastern rebel-held Aleppo landed near a bread distribution center and two hospitals Wednesday, killing seven people and putting at least one of the medical facilities completely out of service, activists and medics said.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the Aleppo Media Center said six people were killed outside the bread distribution center.

Aref al-Aref, a nurse at M2, one of the hospitals, said government shelling hit the bread distribution center near the city center before dawn. As the wounded were brought into the hospital, one of the five shells fired in a sequence fell at the emergency entrance, killing one person accompanying a wounded patient, al-Aref said.

Al-Aref said the shelling caused damage to the hospital and put parts of it out of service. He said three hospital staff members were injured.

Later, an airstrike hit near the M2 hospital, he said. No one was injured.

In another attack, an airstrike hit near a hospital in the northern part of the rebel-held area, cutting off electricity and water supplies. Mohammed Abu Rajab, head of M10 hospital, the largest of eight hospitals in eastern Aleppo, said the intensive care unit was most affected when the airstrike hit, as the generators and the oxygen supplies were knocked out.

Abu Rajab said the patients from ICU had to be moved to another facility, because the intensive care unit was unable to run. Water supplies and the hospital's fuel tanks were also hit, Abu Rajab said.

Footage from the hospital's power station showed fuel tanks, generators and oxygen cylinders damaged from the attack.

The Observatory said the neighborhood where M10 hospital is located has been targeted by warplanes, helicopters and artillery since early Wednesday.

"It hit when we were asleep. No one has slept since and we are exhausted," said Abu Rajab. He said authorities "know this facility and where it is very well," and that it is one of the oldest and largest hospitals in Aleppo. No one was injured in the attack, he said.

Adham Sahloul of the U.S.-based Syrian American Medical Society, which supports the two hospitals, said the two attacks on the medical facilities took place at the same time, suggesting they were deliberately targeted. He noted that it was believed earlier that airstrikes directly hit the hospital buildings, but in fact strikes and artillery fire destroyed the surrounding infrastructure. He said that while the two hospitals were not directly hit the attacks caused structural damage to both.

Sahloul said that one child who was in an ambulance died because he was not able to receive treatment during the chaos. Al-Aref could not confirm the child's death. Abu Rajab of M10 hospital earlier said two people had been killed because they could not receive treatment after the hospitals were attacked but did not provide further details.

The international charity Doctors Without Borders, known by its French acronym MSF, said in a tweet Wednesday that the two facilities were put out of service.

The closures leave eastern Aleppo with six functioning hospitals, only three of which are capable of dealing with emergencies, Sahloul said.

The Syrian government and its ally Russia have been accused of targeting medical facilities in rebel-held areas. The U.S.-based Physicians for Human Rights has recorded 382 attacks on medical facilities and hospitals throughout Syria since the start of the conflict in 2011. Of those, 293 were carried out by government forces and 16 were conducted by Russian warplanes, it said.

Hospitals in eastern Aleppo have been overwhelmed with casualties since the start of a government offensive last week after the collapse of the cease-fire. MSF, which supports all the hospitals in eastern Aleppo, said doctors have reported receiving more than 270 bodies and 800 wounded patients since last Wednesday.

This story has been corrected to show that the first hospital which was struck is called M2, not M1.
A video from besieged eastern Aleppo's al-Shaar neighborhood emerges showing the moment a young girl, identified as Ghazal Qasim, trapped beneath rubble of a five floor building blown to smithereens by a deadly Assad government's bunker buster bomb attack on September 27, is rescued by the Syrian Civil Defense, better known as the white helmets.