From Oxfam America (http://www.oxfamamerica.org):
Yet again, an image of a little Syrian boy is shaking us to our core.
A year after the devastating pictures of little Aylan Kurdi’s body washed ashore on a Turkish beach, images of another little boy are going viral and forcing us to stop and pay attention.
This time, the little boy is alive, rescued from the rubble of a bombed out building. He is silently seated on the bright orange seat of an ambulance, caked in dust with blood smeared on his face. Stunned, shocked and dazed, he wipes his face. Some blood gets on his hand and like every little kid, his instinct is to wipe it on the seat. This is, after all, happening while the world watches. We mustn’t turn away.
Please join in taking action now. Tell President Obama and Secretary Kerry: protect Syrian civilians from violence and help bring an end to this crisis once and for all at https://secure2.oxfamamerica.org/page/speakout/withsyria.
Once I watched the video, I wanted so desperately to scoop the little boy up and hold him, clean his face and tell him it will be ok. But will it? Thankfully his parents and siblings all survived, but sadly, there is no guarantee of safety.
Identified by the media as five-year-old Omran Daqneesh, he is just one of the many children in the middle of a horrendous conflict that is now as old as he is.
Since the end of July, the fighting has intensified in Aleppo, with reports of attacks on schools and hospitals from the air and indiscriminate shelling and bombardment of civilian areas.
Hundreds of people, including many children, have reportedly been killed. The city has seen its main supply routes blocked by warring parties and thousands of civilians are cut off from food, water and health care.
It can’t be said enough: the situation in Syria is truly dire. The children of Syria and their families have been left with no good choices. Whether they stay or go, they face uncertainty, violence, and death. We must take action now.
The US is well on its way to meeting its relatively modest goal of resettling 10,000 Syrian refugees this fiscal year, but it can and should do more. The nearly 10,000 Syrians the US resettled thus far represent a tiny fraction of the nearly 5 million Syrian refugees in the Middle East who fled their homes and their country because of a conflict that has now raged for nearly five and a half years.
We just can’t turn away from Aylan and Omran – we must bear witness and we must try to help. Tell President Obama and Secretary Kerry now: protect Syrian civilians from violence and help bring an end to this crisis once and for all.
Thank you for raising your voice for peace.
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