It is an image that captures the horrors of Syria’s war in a single frame.
A father climbs through the ruins of his home, destroyed in an airstrike just moments earlier, in a frantic effort to reach his children. Amjad al-Abdullah’s face is fixed in horror as his infant daughter Tuqa dangles from the wreckage, several stories high, hanging by a piece of her clothing. The child’s sister reaches out to grab her from beneath the rubble to stop her falling.
The photograph, shared by Syrian activists, was taken following an airstrike by Syrian or Russian government jets on Wednesday in the northern province of Idlib, where Bashar al-Assad’s forces are fighting to recapture the last rebel-held bastion in the country.
The atrocity caps a deadly month for children in Idlib. According to Save the Children, more children have lost their lives to violence in the last four weeks than in the entirety of 2018. The charity said on Wednesday that at least 33 kids have been confirmed killed since 24 June, compared to 31 during the whole of last year.
Mr Abdullah, the father, was not able to save all of his children. According to Syrian hospital workers, seven-month-old Tuqa miraculously survived, but her five-year-old sister Riham died soon after the attack, as did her mother, Asmaa. Two other sisters were severely injured, one of them is still in a critical condition.
Bashar al Sheikh, a photographer from Kafr Nabudah, was among the first on the scene after the attack.
“There was dust everywhere in the air, and people were screaming for help. I could see the young children clinging on to each other,” he tells The Independent from Idlib.
“The father was screaming ‘Don’t move! Don’t move!’”
“The older child was still clinging on to the baby. We rushed them to al-Shami hospital but they were running out of blood supplies and had to take them to Idlib hospital.
“I stayed with the children, praying they would be safe.”
Sonia Khush, Save the Children’s Syria response director, describes the situation in Idlib as “a nightmare”.
“The injuries we are seeing are horrific. It’s clear that once again children have been killed and injured in indiscriminate attacks,” she says.
“The children of northwest Syria have been caught in violent conflict for 80 days with no lull. They have been denied education, food, healthcare and forced to sleep under the trees in open fields for months now,” Khush adds.
The Syrian army, backed by its ally Russia, launched an offensive in late April aimed at retaking key roads and trade routes around Idlib and northern Hama, which the government sees as vital to consolidating its control over the north of the country.
The renewed violence has sent waves of civilians fleeing from areas near the front lines of the battle to towns and villages further north, where aid groups were already struggling to deal with more than a million displaced people from all over Syria.
This week, violence has dramatically spiked. The United Nations said that Monday was one of the deadliest days for civilians since the offensive began almost three months ago. At least 59 civilians were killed that day alone, and more than 100 women, children and men were injured, following a succession of deadly airstrikes in southern Idlib.
“Some of the dead bodies were torn into pieces or burnt beyond recognition. Many of the victims were women and children, some of them suffering the most horrific injuries,” says Mark Cutts, the UN’s deputy regional humanitarian coordinator for the Syria crisis.
Cutts describes the increased violence as “part of a wave of new attacks on critical civilian infrastructure across northwest Syria in recent months, including health facilities, schools, water plants, and bakeries”.
He adds that the UN has documented more than 400 civilian deaths since April. The actual toll may be much higher.
Idlib represents the last area held by the armed opposition to Assad’s rule, following the defeat of the fragmented rebels in the south of the country.
Government forces began amassing around the edges of the territory in September 2018, prompting the United Nations to warn of a “bloodbath” if the offensive went ahead.
An attack appeared to have been averted at the last minute by an agreement between Turkey and Russia – but that soon unravelled. As part of that deal, Turkey was tasked with using its influence in the province, where it backs a number of rebel groups and has troops on the ground, to force extremist groups to withdraw from a “buffer zone”.
The largest of those groups is Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), led by the former Syrian offshoot of al-Qaeda and classified as a terror group by the United Nations. In the time since the deal was announced, HTS strengthened its control over Idlib.
