The Real Aleppo Moment: Are We Really Going to Stand By and Watch a Massacre?
It’s amazing how Twitter can bring a war halfway around the world directly into your consciousness in a way that no news report can.
Meet @Neurosurg_Omar. He’s a brain surgeon in Aleppo. And by now I hope we all know where Aleppo is located, thanks to Gary Johnson’s famous gaffe.
As I write this, the citizens of Aleppo are bearing the brunt of Syria’s 5-year Civil War. Russian and Syrian forces loyal to Assad have laid siege to the rebel-held city since the week-long ceasefire broke down, cutting off all food and medical supplies to those trapped inside. According to the New York Times and the World Health Organization, heavy bombardment of the area by Syrian and Russian forces killed 338 people in the last week, including more than 100 children.
Some of these children arrived at Aleppo’s M10 hospital with brain injuries requiring emergency surgery. That’s where Omar Ibrahim comes in. He’s one of just five doctors at M10, the city’s largest medical facility. You can see the x-rays and photos of some of his young patients on his Twitter feed. At the same time that doctors were scrambling to tend to the wounded with limited supplies, the underground facility was one of two hospitals hit by a missile earlier this week, rendering it out of service. Here’s what he told me about the conditions yesterday:
Last night, an additional two barrel bombs hit the hospital, and there were reports of a cluster bomb, a munition intended to break apart and inflict maximum damage. Omar can’t talk as they’re evacuating patients now.
I don’t claim to understand the subtle and not-so-subtle dynamics of Syria’s warscape, but from a humanitarian perspective, this is not a fair fight. I hope history doesn’t show that the entire international community just turned away and let it happen.
Want to help? You can donate to the Syrian American Medical Society Foundation that runs the Aleppo hospitals. But none of those supplies can reach the hospital until something happens to end the siege. The aid is just waiting there, blocked outside Aleppo, and the clock is ticking as more innocent people die.
