“Man lured children with packets of chips. Then, a bomb was detonated. The attack claimed 126 lives, killing more than 80 children”
Damascus: Traumatic pictures of Syrian photographer emerge, showing him putting down his camera in order to carry a wounded young boy after a bomb attack and then breaking down in tears after seeing another dead child lying face down on the ground.
A convoy of buses carrying evacuees from nearby villages stopped briefly in rebel-held Rashidin, west of Aleppo. The Telegraph quotes local reports saying “A man lured children waiting near the buses over to a car with packets of chips. Then, a bomb was detonated. The attack claimed 126 lives, killing more than 80 children”
Photographer and activist Abd Alkader Habak, who was working nearby, was briefly knocked unconscious by the powerful blast.
“The scene was horrible – especially seeing children wailing and dying in front of you,” Mr Habak told CNN.
“So I decided along with my colleagues that we’d put our cameras aside and start rescuing injured people.”
The first child he checked on was dead, Mr Habak recalled in horror. Then he ran towards another. The boy was barely breathing. He picked him up and ran towards an ambulance.
“This child was firmly holding my hand and looking at me,” he said.
These haunting photographs were taken by Muhammad Alrageb, another photographer at the scene.
Mr Algareb told CNN “I also helped some of the injured civilians but then began taking photos”
“I wanted to film everything to make sure there was accountability,” he said. “I feel proud that there was a young journalist there helping save lives.”
Mr Habak said he did not know whether the injured boy survived. He left the child, who he guessed was around 7-years-old – in an ambulance and rushed back to the scene of the bombing.
That’s when the photographer came across another child on the ground.
This devastating photograph, shot by a different photographer, shows Mr Habak on his knees wailing near the boy’s body. “I overcame with emotion,” he told CNN. “What I and my colleagues witnessed is indescribable.”
Syria’s war has left more than 320,000 people dead since erupting in 2011