Cold death in the arms of the father who was attempting to reach a hospital on foot to cure his small bronchitis patient : it happened in northwestern Syria tormented by the conflict and where, according to the UN, about 800 thousand people are fleeing in desperate humanitarian conditions, tight in the grip of frost and, in many cases, without drinking water and a refuge to shelter.
The story of Iman, who died on Thursday in the district of Afrin on the border with Turkey , is also that of Abdelwahhab, another newborn baby who died of frostbite in recent days in the nearby Idlib region. And that of 123 other Syrian children killed by freezing winters during the past eight years of the war, according to reports from the Syrian Human Rights Network. Yesterday the news of an entire family had spread - father, mother and two daughters - death suffocated in their makeshift tent in Idlib due to the malfunction of a stove never repaired.
According to the National Observatory for Human Rights in Syria, the family did not have the means to provide a new stove and instead had obtained a not properly functioning heating medium, which had proved lethal in spreading toxic smoke in the tent. There are images circulating on the net - the authenticity of which cannot be independently verified - of the father and the two little girls who died next to the man in the tent: they are wrapped in blankets, still close to each other.
Syrian and international media also publish photos of what is said to be little Iman, who died in Afrin, portrayed while still wrapped in the clothes with which she was carried in her arms by her father. According to sources, the man, Mahmud Laila, also died shortly after his daughter. A refugee from the Damascus region, Mahmud had been displaced with his family at least three more times. The last region of origin was the southwestern suburb of Aleppo near Idlib. From there the family of Mahmud had reached the Afrin countryside, where it has been snowing for days and where the most basic reception facilities for refugees are lacking. Since December 1 to today, since the Syrian Russian-government offensive against the Idlib region and part of Aleppo began, there are about 800 thousand IDPs according to the UN. The area is under Turkish influence and anti-regime militiamen operate there. These are under the orders of Ankara, which in recent days has responded directly to the Damascus fire. With the escalation of the conflict, the humanitarian emergency has also increased. The Observatory states that little Iman had fallen ill with bronchitis, and that her condition had worsened, so much so that her father risked going on foot for several hours to reach the nearest hospital by crossing at dawn, on foot, a mountain path.
According to the Syrian Observatory, the girl died before arriving in the hospital.