Five-year-old Omran Daqneesh, with his blood-splattered face, personifies the suffering that innocent civilians have endured in Syria for so long. His photograph was splashed across the world on Thursday in the manner of the three-year-old Syrian migrant, Aylan Kurdi, who was washed ashore on a Turkish beach last year. While Omran has miraculously survived the Russian bombardment from the skies, Aylan&’s death was one of the thousands thrown up by the Syrian conflict. During the fifth anniversary year of the Arab Spring, the harrowing visuals of the two kids ought to stir the conscience of the world and also, of course, Russia, the Islamist fundamentalists of the ISIS variety, and the repressive dictator in Damascus who bashes on regardless. The fate of Omran&’s parents and siblings was still unclear when he was photographed in an ambulance, his face covered in dust and blood after a devastating air strike on rebel-held areas in embattled Aleppo. For a while, he sat inside the amubulance alone and stunned — a horrendous visual of injured innocence, if ever there was one. On closer reflection, Omran and Aylan are the worst victims of the international power-play over the past five years. And neither is or was a rebel against Bashar al-Assad. A dithering Security Council has been woefully ineffectual in Syria; but the humanitarian agencies of the UN ought now to step in on behalf of the below-five generation, which has been at the receiving end of adult fury, foibles of the European bloc, and the counter-mobilisation against the fundamentalists.

Indeed, the suffering of children is today one of the heart-rending facets of the conflict in Syria. Omran and Aylan are not isolated cases; videos of children being pulled out of the rubble in Aleppo have been widely circulated on social media Not that the harrowing reality has not been condemned at the high table, yet the children continue to suffer and are almost beyond hope, beyod despair. Omran and his family now face an uncertain future, as Aleppo continues to be the focus of battles and bombardment; no aid deliveries have thus far been able to enter rebel-held areas. The conflict has escalated as the city is divided between rebel and government-controlled areas. The photograph of Omran has brought home the horror of life in Syria. And yet Assad soldiers on as does the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.