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Surrounded by shouting, he's completely silent.


The child is small, alone, covered in blood and dust, dropped in the back of an ambulance with his feet dangling off the edge of a too-big chair.


He doesn't cry or speak. His face is stunned and dazed, but not surprised. He wipes his hand over his wounded face, looks at the blood, wipes it off on the chair.

المشاهد الأولية لقصف طائرات حربية يعتقد أنها روسية على حي القاطرجي 17-8-2016

It's past time to be shocked by Aleppo


The past several years have seen a flood of horrific photos from the war in Syria: starving children, wounded civilians, mourning crowds, devastated cities, the many dead.


But this tiny moment in Aleppo has resonated in a new way.


The photograph of Aylan Kurdi, the Syrian 3-year-old who drowned and washed ashore in Turkey last year, intensified Europe's conversations about the refugee crisis and moral responsibility. Now the image of the boy in the ambulance is bringing new attention to the ongoing agonies of the Syrian conflict.


The video was released by the Aleppo Media Center, an anti-government activist group in Syria, The Associated Press reports. It adds:

 by government forces. As a result, hospitals have been pushed underground and use codenames, such as "M10."


Reporter Ben Taub wrote about those hospitals, and the doctors who stay in Syria to staff them, for 

 about the devastating scenes at these makeshift hospitals.


Without adequate facilities, supplies, staffing or basic infrastructure, doctors in Syria find themselves frequently unable to do much more than watch their patients die.


But the boy in the ambulance, was lucky.


He had a head injury but no brain damage, and was treated at the hospital then released, al-Ezz, the doctor, told the AP.


The rest of his family reportedly was rescued, too — his mother, his father, and his siblings, ages 1, 6 and 11. They all escaped major injury.


"We sent the younger children immediately to the ambulance, but the 11-year-old girl waited for her mother to be rescued. Her ankle was pinned beneath the rubble," Raslan, the reporter, told the AP.


Shortly after the family was rescued, their damaged apartment building collapsed, Raslan says.

Opposition activists in Syria released a video showing a quiet boy in the back of an ambulance. The haunting image -- of a quiet boy, covered in blood and dust -- has captured global attention

A wounded child in Aleppo, silent and still, shocks the world

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