The lost children of Aleppo

One. Two. Three… The hands are lifted up timidly. The children looked at each other somewhat bewildered. "Professor, when it comes to dead relatives is because of the war? ", question a child of plump cheeks sitting in the latest chairs of the classroom. The teacher says with the head. The hands of the 90% of the children, now if you are lifted into the air. Mothers. Brothers. Parents. Grandparents. Cousins. Uncles. Who more and who has less lost, at least, a close relative since the civil war started in Syria.

Noor sits on the first row. "It is a schoolgirl applied," says Um Modar the director of this clandestine college located in the east of the city of Aleppo. The girl, just nine years, colorized body sponge Bob. The small, concentrated not to go off, you nibble on the tongue. "I was going with my grandfather to buy bread and fell to my side," recalls Noor. A sniper's bullet stole the life in front of her. Makes a small wrist and continues by coloring your drawing.

Some desks ahead of Fatima is the small pheasant, eight years. The child colored and colored with anger a drawing where you can see his father, a soldier in the Army Free Sirius (ELS) fighting against a tank. "I am very proud of it," says while not lifting the view of the folio in white which is gradually being filled with colors. "When I'm older i will be a soldier as the", he says. "His father was killed in combat a little more than a year ago," says Um Modar. Since then the small pheasant is usually not very talkative and has a slight nervous tic in the lower lip. It has become somewhat gruff and thinks only of getting older to avenge his dead father. "I very much miss", judgment before returning to immerse yourself in your drawing.


Last April 30 a plane from the Assad regime launched several TNT Barrels against a college of the neighborhood of Al Ansari. In that attack killed 18 people, mostly children who were in class at the time of the attack. "We have a park less than a block. Once we have been there for children to play with the swings, but a bomb fell against a nearby building… and since then the small do not come out of the classroom," he recalls.

Dozens of children wander the streets of the neighborhood of Sukari carrying in the hands of simple cubes or plastic trays of brass. Some laugh, other jubilation in silence rocking back hubs forwards and backwards. "We are going to look for food," says Mohammad, in five years. "I come here every day so that we can eat," says the small that accompanies her older sister, Aisha, for 10 years. "With this we eat eight people. It is not enough and we were hungry. Some days the food does not reach to all the neighbors and we stayed without eating," said the girl.

Um Mahmood, 60 years, works with a small NGO that distributes 400 kilos of food among the most needy. She, every day, if you feel in their flimsy plastic seat and wait for the children come to search for food. "The hardest thing is to listen to them asking for food. It breaks my soul," says the woman with broken voice. "No child should go through a situation like this. This is not a good life for them," says while the tears flow from its eyes and slip down his cheeks.