A video from besieged eastern Aleppo has shown the moment a young girl, trapped beneath rubble following a deadly bomb attack, is rescued by the Syria Civil Defence, better known as the white helmets.

The footage shows the emergency workers breaking through a wall with a drill to access part of the five floor building blown to smithereens by pro-Assad bombs. At first nothing can be seen of the young girl, identified as Ghazal Qasim, covered in dust and trapped under huge pieces of rubble.

As White Helmets start removing the pieces of debris from around Ghazal she can be heard screaming violently. Her reaction when she is removed on an orange stretcher and touched on the leg would seem to imply it was broken.

As she is torn from the rubble, the pink tracksuit she was wearing at the time of the bombing can just be seen through the thick dust. With her eyes closed and her mouth slightly open Ghazal only moves to scream when she is knocked.

In images which have been uncomfortably familiar, as Ghazal is brought into the light of the outside world like Omran Daqneesh whose pictures shocked the world, she is as grey as the bombed-out buildings that surround her.

Activists have claimed in unconfirmed media reports that Ghazal was the sole survivor of the wreckage. The video of her rescue from the building lasts just under five minutes but the white helmets have said they were digging for four hours to rescue her.

A local activist alleged that bunker buster bombs were used in the attack to destroy buildings in Aleppo's al-Shaar neighbourhood on Tuesday 27 September.

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The video emerges as the international community and human rights groups condemn unprecedented violence in eastern Aleppo where the Syrian government and its Russian and Iranian backers appear to be pursuing an end game. In the aftermath of a seven-day-long ceasefire across Syria the Assad regime vowed that it would retake all territory lost over the course of the country's six-year civil war.

The UN's children's charity UNICEF has called the effect of the war in Aleppo on children as the worst seen since the conflict began. At least 96 children have been killed and 223 have been injured in Eastern Aleppo since Friday, UNICEF said.

"The children of Aleppo are trapped in a living nightmare," said UNICEF Deputy Executive Director Justin Forsyth said in a statement. "There are no words left to describe the suffering they are experiencing."

The health system in Eastern Aleppo is crumbling with some 30 doctors left, hardly any equipment or emergency medicine to treat the injured, and an ever-increasing number of trauma cases. </s> BEIRUT — The 6-year-old girl was found trapped under the rubble of her home, destroyed by an airstrike in Syria’s rebel-held city of Aleppo. “Dust!” she wailed as rescue workers pried away the stones and debris on top of her, finally freeing her and placing her on a stretcher as she screamed for her father.

“Forget the dust. I’ll wash your face and give you water. Come on, sweetheart,” one rescuer said.

Bruised and battered but alive, Ghazl Qassem was among the lucky survivors of the attack earlier this week. Four days later, rescue workers were still digging Friday through the rubble of the apartment building after pulling out the bodies of 20 people, including nine children, most from Ghazl’s family. They were searching for at least three others believed inside.

At least 96 children are among the 320 people killed in Aleppo since a cease-fire collapsed on Sept. 19, according to UNICEF, as Syrian and Russian warplanes barrage the city’s eastern opposition neighborhoods, trying to crush more than five years of resistance there. Almost a third of the 840 people wounded over the same period are children, according to the World Health Organization.

“Aleppo is one of the most dangerous places in the world, and in the last week it has become perhaps the most dangerous place in the world for children.” Juliette Touma, regional chief of communications for the U.N children’s agency told The Associated Press.

Nearly 300,000 people — including 100,000 children — are trapped in Aleppo’s rebel-held eastern districts, a pocket of resistance some eight miles long and three miles wide that civil defense workers say has been hit by 1,900 bombs in the past week. The campaign has wreaked destruction on hospitals, clinics, residential buildings, water stations and electric generators.

Parents desperately struggling to keep their families safe fear the threat of an imminent ground offensive. They hold little hope for the future, with no regular schooling and little access to nutritious food. Images of wounded and screaming children, covered in dust or being pulled out of rubble, have become a daily reality in Aleppo.

“We are totally resigned to God’s will,” said Khaled Sakka, a father of 10 children, all under the age of 14. He, his three wives and the children all sleep in one room in the middle of the house, the only safety measure they have against the nightly airstrikes.

“The bombs are bringing down five-story buildings. They are even reaching bunkers,” he said.

Wounded children are often left untreated, sometimes to die, in Aleppo’s overwhelmed hospitals. Only 30 doctors remain in opposition-held neighborhoods: One physician for every 10,000 people, compared to a peacetime standard of one for every 1,000, Touma said.

“It is very difficult to know how many (children) are traumatized, but one would imagine every single one is impacted by the horrors, especially with the intensification of the violence in the past week,” she said.

So-called bunker-busting bombs, designed to target underground structures, have been widely used, possibly to crush tunnels or bunkers used as refuge by the thousands of rebel fighters defending the districts.

But the powerful bombs also threaten the underground shelters where civilians take refuge and where children go to school. For the past several years, most classes have been held in basements because of the constant fighting and threat of airstrikes.

“The use of bunker-busting bombs means there is literally nowhere we can keep children safe, ” said Nick Finney of Save the Children, which runs 13 schools in eastern Aleppo, eight of them held underground. “We’re now more likely to see children being pulled from the rubble or treated on the floor of a hospital than sitting at a school desk.”

When schools opened across the country this month, they remained closed in eastern Aleppo because of the danger, said Brita Haj, the head of the local council in the rebel-held part of the city.

Medics say the death toll among children and other residents may be far higher than reported, since some families bury their dead without taking them to hospitals or morgues, and many victims remain buried in the rubble.

Dr. Hatem, a pediatrician, said women and children make up a large percentage of the victims because they are the ones who stay at home. As one of two pediatricians in besieged Aleppo, Hatem said he had an enormous load even before the last week’s intensification of fighting, treating 80 to 120 children a day.

Now he’s seeing a spike in wounded children in intensive care, from four or five a month to four or five a day. There is also a rise in aggressive behavior among children and various signs of trauma such as bed-wetting or losing the ability to walk or talk, said Hatem, who gave only his last name out of security fears.

Ghazl Qassem was at home with her four siblings, her pregnant mother, cousins and grandmother when the bomb struck Tuesday around midday. Their apartment building is adjacent to a hospital in a neighborhood with a number of specialized clinics; hospitals and clinics have been frequent targets in the recent campaign.

The children’s father, Hussein, was not home at the time.

Since Tuesday’s attack he has not moved from the rubble as the bodies of his family members have been pulled out one after the other, including his wife and three other children, said a neighbor, Tamim Selim.

Ghazl is staying with an aunt. “She is having nightmares. She is still in shock. She sleeps and wakes up, reaches for her mother’s phone and watches photos there and cries,” Selim said.

Abdul-Majid Malah, a father of three who lives nearby, rushed to the scene after the bomb.

“I only saw the dust. When it settled, the building was all on the ground. It was like dominos,” he said.

His children, ages 2, 3 and 4, rush into his arms every time they hear a bomb, he said. Then a minute later, they go back to playing.

There is no adequate underground shelter in his building for Malah, his pregnant wife and children to take refuge.

“We can only pray that the bombs don’t hit us at home,” he said, adding that he stays up all night tracking where the missiles are hitting. “I won’t be able to change fate, but I am too stressed out to fall asleep.”

The park next to their house was bombed last month, so the children have not been allowed to venture outside. On Friday, incendiary bombs hit outside their building, but no one was hurt.

“We only survive on hope,” he said. </s> BEIRUT — The 6-year-old girl was found trapped under the rubble of her home, destroyed by an airstrike in Syria’s rebel-held city of Aleppo. “Dust!” she wailed as rescue workers pried away the stones and debris on top of her, finally freeing her and placing her on a stretcher as she screamed for her father.

“Forget the dust. I’ll wash your face and give you water. Come on, sweetheart,” one rescuer said.

Bruised and battered but alive, Ghazl Qassem was among the lucky survivors of the attack earlier this week. Four days later, rescue workers were still digging Friday through the rubble of the apartment building after pulling out the bodies of 20 people, including nine children, most from Ghazl’s family. They were searching for at least three others believed inside.

At least 96 children are among the 320 people killed in Aleppo since a cease-fire collapsed on Sept. 19, according to UNICEF, as Syrian and Russian warplanes barrage the city’s eastern opposition neighborhoods, trying to crush more than five years of resistance there. Almost a third of the 840 people wounded over the same period are children, according to the World Health Organization.

“Aleppo is one of the most dangerous places in the world, and in the last week it has become perhaps the most dangerous place in the world for children.” Juliette Touma, regional chief of communications for the U.N children’s agency told The Associated Press.

Nearly 300,000 people — including 100,000 children — are trapped in Aleppo’s rebel-held eastern districts, a pocket of resistance some eight miles long and three miles wide that civil defense workers say has been hit by 1,900 bombs in the past week. The campaign has wreaked destruction on hospitals, clinics, residential buildings, water stations and electric generators.

Parents desperately struggling to keep their families safe fear the threat of an imminent ground offensive. They hold little hope for the future, with no regular schooling and little access to nutritious food. Images of wounded and screaming children, covered in dust or being pulled out of rubble, have become a daily reality in Aleppo.

“We are totally resigned to God’s will,” said Khaled Sakka, a father of 10 children, all under the age of 14. He, his three wives and the children all sleep in one room in the middle of the house, the only safety measure they have against the nightly airstrikes.

“The bombs are bringing down five-story buildings. They are even reaching bunkers,” he said.

Wounded children are often left untreated, sometimes to die, in Aleppo’s overwhelmed hospitals. Only 30 doctors remain in opposition-held neighborhoods: One physician for every 10,000 people, compared to a peacetime standard of one for every 1,000, Touma said.

“It is very difficult to know how many (children) are traumatized, but one would imagine every single one is impacted by the horrors, especially with the intensification of the violence in the past week,” she said.

So-called bunker-busting bombs, designed to target underground structures, have been widely used, possibly to crush tunnels or bunkers used as refuge by the thousands of rebel fighters defending the districts.

But the powerful bombs also threaten the underground shelters where civilians take refuge and where children go to school. For the past several years, most classes have been held in basements because of the constant fighting and threat of airstrikes.

“The use of bunker-busting bombs means there is literally nowhere we can keep children safe, “ said Nick Finney of Save the Children, which runs 13 schools in eastern Aleppo, eight of them held underground. “We’re now more likely to see children being pulled from the rubble or treated on the floor of a hospital than sitting at a school desk.”

When schools opened across the country this month, they remained closed in eastern Aleppo because of the danger, said Brita Haj, the head of the local council in the rebel-held part of the city.

Medics say the death toll among children and other residents may be far higher than reported, since some families bury their dead without taking them to hospitals or morgues, and many victims remain buried in the rubble.

Dr. Hatem, a pediatrician, said women and children make up a large percentage of the victims because they are the ones who stay at home. As one of two pediatricians in besieged Aleppo, Hatem said he had an enormous load even before the last week’s intensification of fighting, treating 80 to 120 children a day.

Now he’s seeing a spike in wounded children in intensive care, from four or five a month to four or five a day. There is also a rise in aggressive behavior among children and various signs of trauma such as bed-wetting or losing the ability to walk or talk, said Hatem, who gave only his last name out of security fears.

Ghazl Qassem was at home with her four siblings, her pregnant mother, cousins and grandmother when the bomb struck Tuesday around midday. Their apartment building is adjacent to a hospital in a neighborhood with a number of specialized clinics; hospitals and clinics have been frequent targets in the recent campaign.

The children’s father, Hussein, was not home at the time.

Since Tuesday’s attack he has not moved from the rubble as the bodies of his family members have been pulled out one after the other, including his wife and three other children, said a neighbor, Tamim Selim.

Ghazl is staying with an aunt. “She is having nightmares. She is still in shock. She sleeps and wakes up, reaches for her mother’s phone and watches photos there and cries,” Selim said.

Abdul-Majid Malah, a father of three who lives nearby, rushed to the scene after the bomb.

“I only saw the dust. When it settled, the building was all on the ground. It was like dominos,” he said.

His children, ages 2, 3 and 4, rush into his arms every time they hear a bomb, he said. Then a minute later, they go back to playing.

There is no adequate underground shelter in his building for Malah, his pregnant wife and children to take refuge.

“We can only pray that the bombs don’t hit us at home,” he said, adding that he stays up all night tracking where the missiles are hitting. “I won’t be able to change fate, but I am too stressed out to fall asleep.”

The park next to their house was bombed last month, so the children have not been allowed to venture outside. On Friday, incendiary bombs hit outside their building, but no one was hurt.

“We only survive on hope,” he said. </s> BEIRUT — The 6-year-old girl was found trapped under the rubble of her home, destroyed by an airstrike in Syria’s rebel-held city of Aleppo. “Dust!” she wailed as rescue workers pried away the stones and debris on top of her, finally freeing her and placing her on a stretcher as she screamed for her father.

“Forget the dust. I’ll wash your face and give you water. Come on, sweetheart,” one rescuer said.

Bruised and battered but alive, Ghazl Qassem was among the lucky survivors of the attack earlier this week. Four days later, rescue workers were still digging Friday through the rubble of the apartment building after pulling out the bodies of 20 people, including nine children, most from Ghazl’s family. They were searching for at least three others believed inside.

At least 96 children are among the 320 people killed in Aleppo since a cease-fire collapsed on Sept. 19, according to UNICEF, as Syrian and Russian warplanes barrage the city’s eastern opposition neighborhoods, trying to crush more than five years of resistance there. Almost a third of the 840 people wounded over the same period are children, according to the World Health Organization.

“Aleppo is one of the most dangerous places in the world, and in the last week it has become perhaps the most dangerous place in the world for children.” Juliette Touma, regional chief of communications for the U.N children’s agency told The Associated Press.

Nearly 300,000 people — including 100,000 children — are trapped in Aleppo’s rebel-held eastern districts, a pocket of resistance some eight miles long and three miles wide that civil defense workers say has been hit by 1,900 bombs in the past week. The campaign has wreaked destruction on hospitals, clinics, residential buildings, water stations and electric generators.

Parents desperately struggling to keep their families safe fear the threat of an imminent ground offensive. They hold little hope for the future, with no regular schooling and little access to nutritious food. Images of wounded and screaming children, covered in dust or being pulled out of rubble, have become a daily reality in Aleppo.

“We are totally resigned to God’s will,” said Khaled Sakka, a father of 10 children, all under the age of 14. He, his three wives and the children all sleep in one room in the middle of the house, the only safety measure they have against the nightly airstrikes.

“The bombs are bringing down five-story buildings. They are even reaching bunkers,” he said.

Wounded children are often left untreated, sometimes to die, in Aleppo’s overwhelmed hospitals. Only 30 doctors remain in opposition-held neighborhoods: One physician for every 10,000 people, compared to a peacetime standard of one for every 1,000, Touma said.

“It is very difficult to know how many (children) are traumatized, but one would imagine every single one is impacted by the horrors, especially with the intensification of the violence in the past week,” she said.

So-called bunker-busting bombs, designed to target underground structures, have been widely used, possibly to crush tunnels or bunkers used as refuge by the thousands of rebel fighters defending the districts.

But the powerful bombs also threaten the underground shelters where civilians take refuge and where children go to school. For the past several years, most classes have been held in basements because of the constant fighting and threat of airstrikes.

“The use of bunker-busting bombs means there is literally nowhere we can keep children safe, “ said Nick Finney of Save the Children, which runs 12 schools in eastern Aleppo, eight of them held underground. “We’re now more likely to see children being pulled from the rubble or treated on the floor of a hospital than sitting at a school desk.”

When schools opened across the country this month, they remained closed in eastern Aleppo because of the danger, said Brita Haj, the head of the local council in the rebel-held part of the city.

Medics say the death toll among children and other residents may be far higher than reported, since some families bury their dead without taking them to hospitals or morgues, and many victims remain buried in the rubble.

Dr. Hatem, a pediatrician, said women and children make up a large percentage of the victims because they are the ones who stay at home. As one of two pediatricians in besieged Aleppo, Hatem said he had an enormous load even before the last week’s intensification of fighting, treating 80 to 120 children a day.

Now he’s seeing a spike in wounded children in intensive care, from four or five a month to four or five a day. There is also a rise in aggressive behavior among children and various signs of trauma such as bed-wetting or losing the ability to walk or talk, said Hatem, who gave only his last name out of security fears.

Ghazl Qassem was at home with her four siblings, her pregnant mother, cousins and grandmother when the bomb struck Tuesday around midday. Their apartment building is adjacent to a hospital in a neighborhood with a number of specialized clinics; hospitals and clinics have been frequent targets in the recent campaign.

The children’s father, Hussein, was not home at the time.

Since Tuesday’s attack he has not moved from the rubble as the bodies of his family members have been pulled out one after the other, including his wife and three other children, said a neighbor, Tamim Selim.

Ghazl is staying with an aunt. “She is having nightmares. She is still in shock. She sleeps and wakes up, reaches for her mother’s phone and watches photos there and cries,” Selim said.

Abdul-Majid Malah, a father of three who lives nearby, rushed to the scene after the bomb.

“I only saw the dust. When it settled, the building was all on the ground. It was like dominos,” he said.

His children, ages 2, 3 and 4, rush into his arms every time they hear a bomb, he said. Then a minute later, they go back to playing.

There is no adequate underground shelter in his building for Malah, his pregnant wife and children to take refuge.

“We can only pray that the bombs don’t hit us at home,” he said, adding that he stays up all night tracking where the missiles are hitting. “I won’t be able to change fate, but I am too stressed out to fall asleep.”

The park next to their house was bombed last month, so the children have not been allowed to venture outside. On Friday, incendiary bombs hit outside their building, but no one was hurt.

“We only survive on hope,” he said. </s> BEIRUT (AP) — The 6-year-old girl was found trapped under the rubble of her home, destroyed by an airstrike in Syria’s rebel-held city of Aleppo. “Dust!” she wailed as rescue workers pried away the stones and debris on top of her, finally freeing her and placing her on a stretcher as she screamed for her father.

“Forget the dust. I’ll wash your face and give you water. Come on, sweetheart,” one rescuer said.

Bruised and battered but alive, Ghazl Qassem was among the lucky survivors of the attack earlier this week. Four days later, rescue workers were still digging Friday through the rubble of the apartment building after pulling out the bodies of 20 people, including nine children, most from Ghazl’s family. They were searching for at least three others believed inside.

At least 96 children are among the 320 people killed in Aleppo since a cease-fire collapsed on Sept. 19, according to UNICEF, as Syrian and Russian warplanes barrage the city’s eastern opposition neighborhoods, trying to crush more than five years of resistance there. Almost a third of the 840 people wounded over the same period are children, according to the World Health Organization.

“Aleppo is one of the most dangerous places in the world, and in the last week it has become perhaps the most dangerous place in the world for children.” Juliette Touma, regional chief of communications for the U.N children’s agency told The Associated Press.

Nearly 300,000 people — including 100,000 children — are trapped in Aleppo’s rebel-held eastern districts, a pocket of resistance some eight miles long and three miles wide that civil defense workers say has been hit by 1,900 bombs in the past week. The campaign has wreaked destruction on hospitals, clinics, residential buildings, water stations and electric generators.

Parents desperately struggling to keep their families safe fear the threat of an imminent ground offensive. They hold little hope for the future, with no regular schooling and little access to nutritious food. Images of wounded and screaming children, covered in dust or being pulled out of rubble, have become a daily reality in Aleppo.

“We are totally resigned to God’s will,” said Khaled Sakka, a father of 10 children, all under the age of 14. He, his three wives and the children all sleep in one room in the middle of the house, the only safety measure they have against the nightly airstrikes.

“The bombs are bringing down five-story buildings. They are even reaching bunkers,” he said.

Wounded children are often left untreated, sometimes to die, in Aleppo’s overwhelmed hospitals. Only 30 doctors remain in opposition-held neighborhoods: One physician for every 10,000 people, compared to a peacetime standard of one for every 1,000, Touma said.

“It is very difficult to know how many (children) are traumatized, but one would imagine every single one is impacted by the horrors, especially with the intensification of the violence in the past week,” she said.

So-called bunker-busting bombs, designed to target underground structures, have been widely used, possibly to crush tunnels or bunkers used as refuge by the thousands of rebel fighters defending the districts.

But the powerful bombs also threaten the underground shelters where civilians take refuge and where children go to school. For the past several years, most classes have been held in basements because of the constant fighting and threat of airstrikes.

“The use of bunker-busting bombs means there is literally nowhere we can keep children safe, ” said Nick Finney of Save the Children, which runs 12 schools in eastern Aleppo, eight of them held underground. “We’re now more likely to see children being pulled from the rubble or treated on the floor of a hospital than sitting at a school desk.”

When schools opened across the country this month, they remained closed in eastern Aleppo because of the danger, said Brita Haj, the head of the local council in the rebel-held part of the city.

Medics say the death toll among children and other residents may be far higher than reported, since some families bury their dead without taking them to hospitals or morgues, and many victims remain buried in the rubble.

Dr. Hatem, a pediatrician, said women and children make up a large percentage of the victims because they are the ones who stay at home. As one of two pediatricians in besieged Aleppo, Hatem said he had an enormous load even before the last week’s intensification of fighting, treating 80 to 120 children a day.

Now he’s seeing a spike in wounded children in intensive care, from four or five a month to four or five a day. There is also a rise in aggressive behavior among children and various signs of trauma such as bed-wetting or losing the ability to walk or talk, said Hatem, who gave only his last name out of security fears.

Ghazl Qassem was at home with her four siblings, her pregnant mother, cousins and grandmother when the bomb struck Tuesday around midday. Their apartment building is adjacent to a hospital in a neighborhood with a number of specialized clinics; hospitals and clinics have been frequent targets in the recent campaign.

The children’s father, Hussein, was not home at the time.

Since Tuesday’s attack he has not moved from the rubble as the bodies of his family members have been pulled out one after the other, including his wife and three other children, said a neighbor, Tamim Selim.

Ghazl is staying with an aunt. “She is having nightmares. She is still in shock. She sleeps and wakes up, reaches for her mother’s phone and watches photos there and cries,” Selim said.

Abdul-Majid Malah, a father of three who lives nearby, rushed to the scene after the bomb.

“I only saw the dust. When it settled, the building was all on the ground. It was like dominos,” he said.

His children, ages 2, 3 and 4, rush into his arms every time they hear a bomb, he said. Then a minute later, they go back to playing.

There is no adequate underground shelter in his building for Malah, his pregnant wife and children to take refuge.

“We can only pray that the bombs don’t hit us at home,” he said, adding that he stays up all night tracking where the missiles are hitting. “I won’t be able to change fate, but I am too stressed out to fall asleep.”

The park next to their house was bombed last month, so the children have not been allowed to venture outside. On Friday, incendiary bombs hit outside their building, but no one was hurt.

“We only survive on hope,” he said. </s> BEIRUT — The 6-year-old girl was found trapped under the rubble of her home, destroyed by an airstrike in Syria's rebel-held city of Aleppo. "Dust!" she wailed as rescue workers pried away the stones and debris on top of her, finally freeing her and placing her on a stretcher as she screamed for her father.

Bruised and battered but alive, Ghazl Qassem was among the lucky survivors of the attack earlier this week. Four days later, rescue workers were still digging Friday through the rubble of the apartment building after pulling out the bodies of 20 people, including nine children, most from Ghazl's family. They were searching for at least three others believed inside.

At least 96 children are among the 320 people killed in Aleppo since a cease-fire collapsed on Sept. 19, according to UNICEF, as Syrian and Russian warplanes barrage the city's eastern opposition , trying to crush more than five years of resistance there. Almost a third of the 840 people wounded over the same period are children, according to the World Health Organization.

"Aleppo is one of the most dangerous places in the world, and in the last week it has become perhaps the most dangerous place in the world for children." Juliette Touma, regional chief of communications for the U.N children's agency told The Associated Press.

Nearly 300,000 people — including 100,000 children — are trapped in Aleppo's rebel-held eastern districts, a pocket of resistance some eight miles long and three miles wide that civil workers say has been hit by 1,900 bombs in the past week. The campaign has wreaked destruction on hospitals, clinics, residential buildings, water stations and electric generators.

Parents desperately struggling to keep their families safe fear the threat of an imminent ground offensive. They hold little hope for the future, with no regular schooling and little access to nutritious food. Images of wounded and screaming children, covered in dust or being pulled out of rubble, have become a daily reality in Aleppo.

"We are totally resigned to God's will," said Khaled Sakka, a father of 10 children, all under the age of 14. He, his three wives and the children all sleep in one room in the middle of the house, the only safety measure they have against the nightly airstrikes.

"It is very difficult to know how many (children) are traumatized, but one would imagine every single one is impacted by the horrors, especially with the intensification of the violence in the past week," she said.

But the powerful bombs also threaten the underground shelters where civilians take refuge and where children go to school. For the past several years, most classes have been held in basements because of the constant fighting and threat of airstrikes.

"The use of bunker-busting bombs means there is literally nowhere we can keep children safe, " said Nick Finney of Save the Children, which runs 12 schools in eastern Aleppo, eight of them held underground. "We're now more likely to see children being pulled from the rubble or treated on the floor of a hospital than sitting at a school desk."

Medics say the death toll among children and other residents may be far higher than reported, since some families bury their dead without taking them to hospitals or morgues, and many victims remain buried in the rubble.

Dr. Hatem, a pediatrician, said women and children make up a large percentage of the victims because they are the ones who stay at home. As one of two pediatricians in besieged Aleppo, Hatem said he had an enormous load even before the last week's intensification of fighting, treating 80 to 120 children a day.

Now he's seeing a spike in wounded children in intensive care, from four or five a month to four or five a day. There is also a rise in aggressive among children and various signs of trauma such as bed-wetting or losing the ability to walk or talk, said Hatem, who gave only his last name out of security fears.

Ghazl Qassem was at home with her four siblings, her pregnant mother, cousins and grandmother when the bomb struck Tuesday around midday. Their apartment building is adjacent to a hospital in a with a number of specialized clinics; hospitals and clinics have been frequent targets in the recent campaign.

Since Tuesday's attack he has not moved from the rubble as the bodies of his family members have been pulled out one after the other, including his wife and three other children, said a , Tamim Selim. </s> Stripped down to the most heart-wrenching imagery, the trailer for the Netflix-produced documentary The White Helmets is undeniably powerful. Backed by a haunting and disembodied rendition of When the Saints Go Marching In, it is a spine-chilling two minute-and-eighteen-second glimpse into a devastating war, peppered with moments of both tragedy ND triumph.

The saints, in this case, are a group of volunteers reportedly made up of everyday Syrians—construction workers, barbers, shopkeepers—who have been risking their lives since 2013 in rebel-controlled areas of Syria, rescuing civilians from the brutal bombing campaign of the regime and its Russian ally. They are technically known as the Syria Civil Defence, popularly called the White Helmets because of the white hard hats they don.

But not everyone believes they are who they claim to be. Over the last week, Syrian and Russian warplanes have wreaked havoc on the White Helmets. “They have bombed all four of our centres in Aleppo city,” Ismail Alabdullah, a 28-year-old volunteer and former English major at Aleppo University, tells Maclean’s by telephone. “Ambulances have been destroyed, rescue equipment. One of our centres was destroyed completely.”

Simultaneously, a Canadian organization has launched a scathing attack on them, accusing the White Helmets of being “terrorists” and a “propaganda arm” of the U.S., U.K., and Israel. The Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), based in Montreal, accuses the group of faking rescue operations and embedding with al-Qaeda and Islamic State militants. In recent weeks, its website, globalresearch.ca, has published more than a half dozen articles claiming to “uncover” the deceit behind White Helmet operations, including an open letter by a retired University of Winnipeg geography professor calling on the NDP government to backtrack on its call to award the White Helmets the Nobel Prize.

The media blitz appears to be linked to a major regime offensive after a ceasefire agreement brokered by Russia and the U.S. collapsed in mid-September. The deal was meant to give aid organizations a chance to reach civilians trapped in rebel-controlled parts of Syria, where the White Helmets operate. Its demise has led to a looming humanitarian catastrophe, the WHO has warned, as regime and Russian jets target the last remaining vestiges of civilian support left in the most vulnerable parts of Syria.

What is behind the CRG’s campaign? Disparaging the last line of defence civilians have against certain death feels like a very un-Canadian thing to do, but Michel Chossudovsky, professor emeritus of economics at the University of Ottawa and the founder of the CRG, is unapologetic. “I haven’t investigated the White Helmets personally,” he says, “but we are dealing with a lot of mainstream media lies. The White Helmets operate solely in al-Qaeda protected areas. That’s certainly an observation we can make and something that gets no attention in the mainstream media.”

His allegations are only partly true. According to journalists and aid workers who have been on the ground in rebel-controlled Syria, no one group, outside of Islamic State and the Kurds, dominates any single region. The complexity and fluidity of alliances between a vast array of militias, some extremist and others moderate, renders sweeping statements like “al-Qaeda protected areas” meaningless.

Jake Simkin, a photojournalist based in Turkey who has spent months at a time embedded with the White Helmets in rebel-held east Aleppo, explains: “If the accusation is that the White Helmets work with ‘terrorists,’ then it would have to be yes to a certain degree,” he says. “They have to negotiate access [to al-Qaeda-held neighbourhoods] to be able to save civilians. As they have a humanitarian agenda, they are allowed that access. The group I have been with has assisted wounded Shiite militias and government soldiers who were trapped in destroyed buildings so they could surrender and be sent back into government areas. The reason the White Helmets were formed was because the Syrian Red Crescent is often not allowed humanitarian access into opposition-held Syria. No humanitarian aid travels from the capital towards the opposition. It has been one of the tactics the government has used to make the rebel held areas surrender their arms.”

From the perspective of some White Helmet critics, however, there are few if any civilians in rebel-controlled Syria, only “terrorists.” The broad brushstroke echoes Russia’s and the Syrian regime’s narrative, which has used the terrorist label to justify their atrocities.

In some instances, CRG provides sound insight into some of the world’s most troubling issues, marshalling a respectable flock of international experts to its cause (albeit almost exclusively from the political left). In other cases, however, it slips dangerously into the surreal world of secretive cabals and conspiracies, and in the case of Syria it seems to go off the rails.

Reports published on its website rely on sources in regime-controlled areas. In one article, the author quotes civilians in Tartous, far from rebel-held territory, who claim that they know the White Helmets are “terrorists.”

Chossudovsky argues, not without some justification, that western nations have backed “terrorists” in their bid to topple another Middle Eastern regime. But expanding that accusation and labelling as terrorists others who oppose Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, including a group of civilians whose sole purpose is saving lives, at the very least needs to be challenged: where is the proof? </s> (CNN) Syrian regime forces pounded eastern Aleppo with airstrikes for a sixth straight day Sunday, bringing the death toll to almost 300 in the most intense bombing since the war began five years ago, rescuers say.

Among the latest reported violence: a suspected chemical attack that killed four children and their parents. Two activist groups -- the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human rights and Aleppo Media Center -- said a barrage of barrel bombs struck their neighborhood, al-Sakhour.

A wounded child is rescued by a White Helmets volunteer after airstrikes on eastern Aleppo Friday.

"This is the heaviest bombardment I have seen in the past five years," said Ismail Abdallah from the White Helmets.

At a time when hospitals are desperately needed, few have withstood the relentless bombardment -- not a single one is operating at full capacity, the Syrian American Medical Society told CNN.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned the assault and "indiscriminate shelling" for killing and maiming scores of civilians, including children, and for leaving eastern Aleppo without a functioning hospital.

"The secretary-general reminds all parties to the conflict that targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure is a war crime," the statement said. "Those responsible for these and other atrocities in Syria, whoever and wherever they are, must one day be brought to account."

Disturbing video shows devastated family

A video from the Aleppo Media Center shows the toll in one neighborhood.

Five bodies -- three children, two adults -- are visible in the bed of a truck, covered in colorful blankets in the cold air. Their neighbors surround them in the street covered with rubble from bombed buildings.

The mother wears a lavender, black and pink headdress and red sweater. The father wears a heavy off-white or tan sweater while the two boys died in dark blue sweaters, matching their skin; a toddler girl is clad in a baby-blue one, emblazoned with a cartoon character.

Their eyes stare, their mouths are agape.

"We were sleeping when a barrel bomb fell near our home," a man explains on the video. "We went down and discovered it was chlorine gas. The victims weren't activists or anything ... but they were suffocating so much, they turned blue. It was a man, four kids, and his wife. The oldest boy was 10 years old. Why did this happen? May God curse you, Bashar (al-Assad)."

Another man shows coins to the videographer from the Aleppo Media Center, which appear tarnished. The man says he took the coins from the pockets of the dead. "The gas caused them to change color," he says.

They weren't the only fatalities from the suspected gas attack. A young man says his family was asleep at 1 a.m. when they were awakened by an explosion.

"We came down and started choking. We discovered it was chlorine gas," he said. "My mother was suffocating and my brother-in-law started foaming at the mouth."

'Aleppo is a Holocaust'

Syria's grinding five-year conflict has devastated Aleppo, divided between government-controlled areas in the west and rebel positions in the east.

A White Helmets volunteer carries an injured man to safety on Saturday following an airstrike in eastern Aleppo.

The regime, backed by Russian air power, has decimated much of eastern Aleppo with aerial bombardments in recent months, and analysts have said the intensified air raids are a sign the regime may be planning a ground offensive to wrest control of the area.

A government siege on eastern Aleppo since July has essentially cut the area off from the rest of the world -- a stranglehold tactic that the Syrian regime is infamous for.

Today, eastern Aleppo is desperately short of food, medicine and fuel supplies, while the roads are full of rubble from destroyed buildings. The sound of bombings and news of children dying are the norm.

"Inside the city of Aleppo is a Holocaust," an Aleppo resident, who describes himself as an independent media activist, told CNN.

JUST WATCHED One of the few doctors left in Aleppo speaks to CNN Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH One of the few doctors left in Aleppo speaks to CNN 02:37

He said neighbors and families were sharing what little food they had left to survive.

The United Nations has pushed to get into the area to deliver aid, and on Sunday it announced it had designed a detailed humanitarian plan to provide assistance and medical evacuations from Syria. It said it had shared the plan with all parties in the conflict, as well as its member states.

"It is imperative all parties agree to the plan and allow us to secure immediate, safe and unimpeded access to provide relief to those most in need in east Aleppo, but equally in all other parts of Syria where there are people in need," read a joint statement from Syria Humanitarian Coordinator Ali Al-Za'tari and Regional Humanitarian Coordinator for the Syria Crisis and Kevin Kennedy.

Children in the crosshairs

Meanwhile, in regime-held western Aleppo, rebel rocket fire hit a school in the government-held al-Furqan neighborhood, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Mouallem said at a news conference in Damascus.

He said 10 students were killed in the attack, while the state-run news agency SANA put the number at eight.

"What did those kids do to die? I am sad about these students' death," he said.

JUST WATCHED War a daily routine for Aleppo's youngest victims Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH War a daily routine for Aleppo's youngest victims 02:42

A student at Aleppo University in the west told CNN that security forces had gathered students in the university's main square on Sunday to protest against rebels in eastern Aleppo.

The student, who CNN is not naming for security reasons, also said they had been told to appeal to the United Nations to have opposition armed groups removed from the east so the siege on civilians can be lifted.

It is unclear how many children have died in the attacks, but at least eight have been reported killed in eastern Aleppo, and eight in the city's west. Activists said there were likely to be more children among the dead.

'Stop bombing hospitals'

Medical charities have renewed calls on the regime to stop targeting health facilities.

"For the first time, eastern Aleppo is out of hospitals operating at full capacity," said Dr. Mazen Kewara, director of the Syrian American Medical Society's Turkey office.

Several major trauma hospitals have been knocked out of service, the organization said, while three floors were destroyed in eastern Aleppo's only dedicated children's hospital, forcing the evacuation of babies, said the charity Doctors Without Borders, which also is known by its French initials MSF.

But activists working in the city said as many as five other hospitals in eastern neighborhoods were still somewhat functional.

Hospitals are desperately needed as 250,000 people remain in eastern Aleppo, pounded by airstrikes.

Doctors Without Borders emergency coordinator Teresa Sancristoval said Saturday's bombardment of hospitals marked "a dark day for east Aleppo."

"The attacks have destroyed entire hospitals, electric generators, emergency rooms and wards, forcing them to stop all medical activities," she said.

"It is not only MSF that condemns indiscriminate attacks on civilians or civilian infrastructure, including hospitals, but also humanitarian law. The message is simple and I don't know how to say it any louder: Stop bombing hospitals."

Tried protecting generator from shrapnel with sand bags. Attacks have destroyed emergency rooms, entire hospitals. https://t.co/MLO8b4qle1 pic.twitter.com/exqDOzz4WV — Doctors w/o Borders (@MSF_USA) November 19, 2016

Staffan De Mistura, the envoy of the United Nations secretary general, met with Syrian Foreign Ministry officials on Sunday and said there was "a total denial of any aerial bombing of hospitals in eastern Aleppo," Reuters reported.

"We should be allowed to send a verification team to verify the damage in hospitals in eastern and western Aleppo," he said. </s> Ismail Abdallah, a member of the Syrian Civil Defence, also called the White Helmets, told CNN that al-Fardous neighborhood has been captured by Syrian government forces, while some areas of resistance remain in parts of the city.

"There is a mass exodus of terrified civilians fleeing from al-Fardous, al-Jaloom, al-Salheine and areas that have been captured today to other areas such as al-Mashhad and Salah Eddiene," he said.

"It is going to be a very difficult situation because there is no place for all these fleeing civilians.

"We believe there are a large number of civilian casualties as a result of this intensifying offensive and White Helmets rescue workers are unable to move to reach any of these areas," Abdallah added.

Syrian state television painted a different picture of the day's events, broadcasting video that it said showed residents celebrating in the streets after government forces took control of a neighborhood. READ: What you need to know about Aleppo Earlier, Syria's state-run news agency SANA and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group confirmed that the neighborhood of al-Sheikh Saeed in southeastern Aleppo had been captured by the Syrian military. The neighborhood was taken from rebel forces with the assistance of government-allied groups. As the situation in Aleppo changes rapidly, CNN will update the map with information from sources on the ground. Large numbers of civilians are also reportedly fleeing the al-Sukkari neighborhood after intense shelling. The exodus of residents coincided with regime forces advancing. The SANA report states that army units are "continuing the operations and targeting the remnants of the terrorists who fled away towards" the al-Sukkari and al-Fardous neighborhoods. In addition, there are reports of civilian casualties as a result of the shelling, according to media organizations with teams in Aleppo. The international community has failed to broker a ceasefire for the city, which appears on the brink of falling back into regime control. The government controls western Aleppo and its troops have made significant territorial gains in the east since its forces entered the enclave by ground on November 27, backed by continual airstrikes. The government has now taken more than three-quarters of the area. Rebel groups held eastern Aleppo for more than four years after the Arab Spring uprising, and a Syrian regime siege on the area had essentially cut it off from the outside world, sparking a humanitarian crisis there. A Syrian family leaves the area following a reported airstrike on Friday, September 23, in rebel-held east Aleppo. Following the airstrike, recovery teams from Syria Civil Defense, known as the White Helmets, began working to free the trapped and recover the dead, including small children. This photo was released by the volunteer group Syria Civil Defense of the bodies of a man, with his knee pulled up near his face, and a child covered in dust after they were killed in the airstrike. The volunteers work to recover the bodies the man and child. A Syrian man carries the body of his nephew, recovered from the rubble. The volunteers remove an infant's body from the destroyed building. A Syrian woman carries the body of her infant after he was recovered. Now civilians are fleeing by the tens of thousands as the relentless airstrikes leave little hope of survival. An estimated 10,000 people fled over the weekend, civilians told CNN -- a number backed by Russian officials. SANA put the figure at around 20,000. READ: Syrian regime forces seize most of old city CNN Senior International Correspondent Fred Pleitgen witnessed thousands of civilians walking through the southern front lines, many gaunt with fatigue and malnutrition, as the children among them cried in fear. It's difficult to know how many civilians remain trapped in eastern Aleppo, but 100,000 are estimated to still be living in the enclave. Some are beginning to return to neighborhoods retaken by government forces, faced with the daunting task of rebuilding their homes and communities.
A video from besieged eastern Aleppo's al-Shaar neighborhood emerges showing the moment a young girl, identified as Ghazal Qasim, trapped beneath rubble of a five floor building blown to smithereens by a deadly Assad government's bunker buster bomb attack on September 27, is rescued by the Syrian Civil Defense, better known as the white helmets.