Omran Daqneesh

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"The Western media is the best. It's free and therefore offers so much diversity." @VeraVanHorne
A general view shows the site of yesterday's airstrike where five-year-old Omran Daqneesh got injured in the rebel-held al-Qaterji neighbourhood of Aleppo, Syria August 18, 2016. The Daqneesh family lived in the building on the left. (source)
Just received this from @TheSyriaCmpgn - a statement from Mahmoud Rislan the photographer of #OmranDaqneesh Sophie McNeill

Sources

Video

Location and building damage is uncertain based on the above footage.
Videos have marking AMC, which appears to be Aleppo Media Center, sponsored by Syrian Expatriates Organization, with contact address in Washington DC.

Brother dies?

According to ABC, "Brother of Syrian Boy Who Became Face of Aleppo's Suffering Dies", Aug. 20, 2016.

  • CNN
    Ali Daqneesh, the 10-year-old brother of Omran Daqneesh, died Saturday, according to Yousef Saddiq, the director of the Aleppo Media Center. His brother, whose photo was not taken, no one mentioned him, he died and he is by God's side now. Omran was pulled out of the rubble quickly to come back to life, Ali stayed under the rubble for a while.
  • Brother of Omran, the bloodied and dazed face of Syrian war, dies in airstrike
    The older brother of a Syrian boy pictured bloodied and dazed after an air strike in Aleppo has died of injuries sustained in the same incident. Ali Daqneesh, 10, was wounded in the air strike on Wednesday alongside his three siblings, his mother and his father. A spokesman for the local council of Aleppo said: “He was martyred while in hospital as a result of the same bombardment that their house was subjected to.”
  • Brother of Syrian boy pulled from Aleppo rubble dies in hospital - The Observer, August 20, 2016

White Helmets involvement

  • ‘We run toward the screams': Meet the Aleppo rescue team that saved 5-year-old Omran - Louisa Loveluck, The Washington Post, August 23, 2016
    As the volunteers scrabbled through smashed cinder blocks, the whimper they’d been hearing for hours grew louder. It was the only sign that this rubble had once been someone’s home.
    “Go slowly, go slowly,” shouted one as the noise turned into a sharp cry. This was always the critical moment, a time when the owner of that sound hovered between life and death and one wrong move could push them over the edge.
    ...
    Zakaria Zakaria in Istanbul contributed to this report.
  • White Helmets left Omran Daqneesh in pain to harm Assad, claims Rev Andrew Ashdown - The Times, 5 June, 2018
    An Anglican priest has accused volunteer rescuers of keeping an injured Syrian child untreated and covered in dust and blood in a propaganda exercise against President Assad. The Rev Andrew Ashdown, whose frequent trips to Syria have led to criticism that he has been appeasing its government, said that the White Helmets, who are funded by the British government and have been nominated for the Nobel peace prize, were militants. Mr Ashdown claimed that Omran Daqneesh was left untreated while he was photographed. He showed an audience a slide of himself posing happily with ten fighters from the Hezbollah militia, which is backed by Iran, and said the Muslim paramilitaries had protected a Syrian Christian monastery.

The Return of Omran

From Bartlett, Mint Press News

* Video: MSM Propaganda Turns Against Itself As Family Of "Boy In Ambulance" From Aleppo Tells Truth - South Front, June 5, 2017

  • The dad of the the boy whose photo was used by the mainstream media in a propaganda war against the Syrian-Iranian-Russian alliance tells the truth about the incident.
  • New photos emerge of Omran Daqneesh, the boy who became a symbol of Aleppo's suffering Raf Sanchez, The Telegraph, June 5
    Omran’s image was widely used to illustrate the brutality of the Assad regime as it tried to crush the opposition in Aleppo, Syria’s largest city. 
    But his family, like many others in rebel-held east Aleppo, are reported to have remained loyal to the regime throughout the siege.
    They refused all media interviews and reportedly went into regime-held west Aleppo when they had a chance.
    In interviews with pro-government media, they explain how a shelling attack on their home (by rebels?) killed one son and injured Omran and the others. He was simply photographed and his image used for propaganda, they now say. Sanchez notes:
    It is possible the family felt forced to take part in the interview for their own safety.
    And, of course, its possible they had to play along with the opposition's propaganda at the time for their own safety, to avoid further loss of children. Their choice in direction of flight suggest the later story is probably more credible and less coerced than the first one. But that's a circumstantial argument and not proof.
  • ALEPPO: The Return of Omran to No Fanfare from Western Media - Vanessa Beeley, 21st Century Wire, June 6, 2017
  • More Interviews With Little Omran’s Father Reveal Terrorist Propaganda, Family Supports Syrian Govt - Brandon Turbeville, Activist Post, June 8, 2017
  • MintPress Meets The Father Of Iconic Aleppo Boy, Who Says Media Lied About His Son - Eva Bartlett, Mint Press News, June 9, 2017
Omran’s father, Mohammad Kheir Daqneesh, had six children, including Omran and the late Mohammad Ali.

should be Ali Mohammad ... (should be Ali Mohammad)

On the evening of Aug. 17, 2016, an event that has yet to be adequately explained occurred in the Qaterji District of the Syrian city of Aleppo. Four-year-old Omran Daqneesh, as well as his siblings and parents, were injured in media alleged was an attack by the Russians – or the Syrian military, depending on what source one chose to believe. People in Aleppo suggested it could have been a strike by the US-led coalition. The reality is not yet known.
...Mr. Daqneesh denied any knowledge of a Russian or Syrian airstrike, saying that he had not heard any airplanes at the time.
  • SANA (Syrian Arab News Agency)
“I was with my family in al-Qaterji neighborhood when our house damaged due to an explosion whose source we didn’t know, and although I was wounded I carried my child Omran who was unharmed and rushed out for fear of a new explosion, the father said.
He went on that a number of terrorists came and snatched Omran from his hands and put him inside an ambulance and took photos which they published later in a way that suits their propaganda and lies, confirming again that Omran has not injured and all the photos of him were staged by the terrorists.
“The terrorists asked me to accompany them outside the city to record false statements about what happened to my son in exchange for large sums of money, but I refused and stayed in Aleppo and didn’t submit to their demands despite the massive pressure and threats they used against me,” he confirmed.
  • Video interviews, direct quotes, etc. (forthcoming?)

Reactions

Pulled from the rubble of a damaged building in Aleppo, Omran Daqneesh has moved the world. The heartbreaking image of little Omran sitting in an ambulance – stunned, his face caked in dust and blood, a Nickelodeon character on his t-shirt – has become a symbol of the Syrian civil war and the untold human suffering it has wrought
  • Oxfam America petition calls on president Obama and/or Secretary of State Kerry for an end to the conflict, by political settlement, and also "I urge you to secure full implementation of UNSC resolutions that would help end attacks and sieges of Syrian civilians and ensure unhindered delivery of humanitarian aid, notably UN Security Council resolutions 2139, 2165, 2254, and 2268." (personalization of text is allowed) “Secure implementation” could mean “enforce,” which could be the basis for a Libya-style air war or other military intervention. Promoting it, their Laura Rusu, blogs how she "found the images so awful that I could barely look. But then I forced myself to watch … We mustn't turn away.” Others agree, and have made it so you almost can't turn away, except by buying the paper and turning to page 2. --Caustic Logic (talk) 02:48, 21 August 2016 (UTC)
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.
better translation of the ending given by TASS: "(mortar) shell or a gas cylinder widely used by terrorists there".
  • Syria's Civil War: Yet another 'iconic image'? by Hamid Dabashi, Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, USA, Aljazeera, 18 Aug 2016.
This is not an icon. This is Omran Daqneesh. He is a Syrian boy. He is alive. (...) That gaze is the look of our damned eternity on this Earth.

UNSC

The United Nations Security Council discussed the humanitarian situation in Syria on Monday, 22 Aug., 2016. The delegations of the United States, Britain and Ukraine blamed Russia for civilian deaths in Syria.

  • Al-Jaafari: Syrian, Russian air force didn’t target al-Qaterji neighborhood in Aleppo, SANA, 22 Aug. 2016.
New York, SANA-Syria’s permanent envoy to the UN Bashar al-Jaafari said on Monday that the Syrian, Russian air force didn’t target al-Qaterji neighborhood in Aleppo and “you have to search about the real criminal.” Al-Jaafari said at a UN Security council session that the first and last responsible for the civilians’’ suffering in Syria are the governments that falsely claimed they are friends of the Syrians.
It was said that Omran Daqneesh incident occurred in al-Qaterji (map), e.g. The child has been identified as five-year-old Omran Daqneesh, who was injured late on Wednesday in a military strike on the rebel-held Qaterji neighbourhood, The Guardian, 18 Aug., 2016,
  • Churkin urges US-led coalition to analyze its actions in Syria, TASS, 22 Aug. 2016.
Regretfully, some UN Security Council members have been tactless and openly unscrupulous in discussing the situation in Syria. They try to push provocative insinuations about the Russian Aerospace Forces operations in Syria through the United Nations Security Council while being reticent about their own actions, which can hardly be called justified

Analysis

Other, Visually Similar

July, 2017, Raqqah