At the tragic sight of Omran Daqneesh, a young Syrian boy rescued from the rubble of an airstrike, one newsreader couldn’t retain her composure.
Omran’s home had been hit by a military airstrike on his neighbourhood in Aleppo, Qaterji, which is currently under rebel control.
Images of the child sitting in the back of an ambulance – dazed, wounded and covered in dust – have put a face to the country’s seemingly-relentless civil war.
At just five years old, he’s as old as the conflict itself.
In a video filmed and circulated by the Aleppo Media Centre, Omran sits shocked and confused by what’s happened and all the cameras being pointed at him.
As he goes to wipe away a tear, he feels the bloodied open wound on the left side of his face and looks shocked.
It was this footage that moved CNN anchor Kate Bolduan to tears while broadcasting live on-air.
Bolduan, a respected reporter, told viewers who Omran was and that he was ‘pulled alive from what was left of their home, after being buried in the rubble’. At this, her voice started to crack.
As tears began to flow, she adds: ‘What strikes me is we shed tears, but there are no tears here. He doesn’t cry once.
‘That little boy is in total shock. He’s stunned, inside his home one moment and the next, lost in the flurry and fury of war and chaos.’
She finished her report by saying: ‘This is Omran. He is alive. We wanted you to know.’
Omran was taken to the M10 hospital in Aleppo, which was itself hit by airstrikes. There, doctors treated his head injury and cleaned the dust from his body.
