Four days later, rescue workers were still digging Friday through the rubble of the apartment building after pulling out the bodies of 20 people, including nine children, most from Ghazl’s family. At least 96 children are among the 320 people killed in Aleppo since a cease-fire collapsed on Sept. 19, according to UNICEF, as Syrian and Russian warplanes barrage the city’s eastern opposition neighborhoods, trying to crush more than five years of resistance there. “Aleppo is one of the most dangerous places in the world, and in the last week it has become perhaps the most dangerous place in the world for children.” Juliette Touma, regional chief of communications for the U.N children’s agency told The Associated Press. At first nothing can be seen of the young girl, identified as Ghazal Qasim, covered in dust and trapped under huge pieces of rubble. The agency cited a doctor on the ground as saying that children with low chances of survival are often left to die because of a lack of capacity or supplies. Many just huddle with their parents in windowless underground shelters — which offer no protection from the powerful bombs that have turned east Aleppo into a kill zone. But lately on the eastern side, Mr. McDonald said, “the bombing has become so intense that even underground shelters aren’t safe any more.” Save the Children has said that at several hospitals and ambulance centres it supports in eastern Aleppo, half of the casualties have been children since the bombings escalated after the collapse of a short-lived cease-fire last week. Now he’s seeing a spike in wounded children in intensive care, from four or five a month to four or five a day.
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, and says at least 96 children have been killed and 223 have been injured in Eastern Aleppo September 23.