In Syria, a building damaged during years of war in the northern city of Aleppo has collapsed, 11 people killed in this incident.

Five-story building collapsed early today, killing most of those who were inside and only one person was rescued alive. The building is in the eastern Salahuddin neighbourhood once held by rebels.

Syria’s nearly eight-year conflict has left more than 400,000 people dead and left broad parts of the country destroyed. </s> DAMASCUS: Syria's state news agency SANA says a building damaged during years of war in the northern city of Aleppo has collapsed, killing 11 people.

SANA said the five-story building collapsed early Saturday, killing most of those who were inside and only one person was rescued alive. The report said the building is in the eastern Salahuddin neighbourhood once held by rebels.

Aleppo had been divided for four years starting in the summer of 2012 between a government-held west and a rebel-held east.

In 2016, the Syrian army launched a months-long offensive that eventually brought the whole city under government control. Syria's nearly eight-year conflict has left more than 400,000 people dead and left broad parts of the country destroyed. </s> A damaged building in the Syrian northern city of Aleppo collapsed Saturday, killing 11 people, including four children, said the Assad regime's news agency.

SANA said the five-story building, damaged during years of war, collapsed early Saturday, killing most of those who were inside. A single person came out alive.

The building was reportedly located in the eastern Salahuddin neighborhood of the city, once held by rebels.

Aleppo had been divided for four years, starting in summer 2012, between a regime-held west and a opposition-held east. In 2016, the Syrian regime launched a months-long offensive that eventually brought the whole city under Assad regime control.

Syria's nearly eight-year conflict has left more than 400,000 people dead and left broad parts of the country destroyed. </s> DAMASCUS, Syria: At least 11 people including four children were killed when a war-damaged apartment block collapsed in the city of Aleppo, state media said.

A child was the only survivor from the collapse in the formerly rebel-held area of Salaheddin, which was bombed by Syria and Russia before being retaken.

Residents have been eking out a living in ruins across Syria, with little rebuilding taking place.

Syria’s authorities have so far focused their efforts on basic infrastructure.

Several other buildings in Salaheddin near the five-storey block that caved in are on the brink of collapse, AFP reported

UN satellite data from 2017 suggested that more than 35,000 structures in the city had suffered damage.

The small amount of residential reconstruction that has taken place there has been carried out privately, AFP reported. </s> At least 11 people, including four children, have died after a block of flats collapsed in Aleppo, Syria, on Saturday, according to state media.

One child was pulled out alive from the rubble of the five-storey, war-damaged block after rescue teams worked to remove the shattered breeze blocks that had buried him, AFP photographers said.

He was the sole survivor of the collapse in the formerly rebel-held neighbourhood of Salaheddin, the official Sana news agency reported.

Saleheddin was heavily bombed before the army overran rebel districts with Russian support in late 2016.

Many of the buildings around the block that caved in still bear the scars of the ferocious four-year battle for the northern city; several are on the brink of collapse.

Washington has estimated the costs of rebuilding Syria’s devastated housing and infrastructure at between $300bn and $400bn.

But it warned last month that, while overthrowing the president, Bashar al-Assad, was no longer a US policy goal, it would contribute no reconstruction funds without fundamental reform in Damascus. </s> Four children have died after a war-damaged block of flats collapsed in Syria today killing at least eleven, state media has said.

The shock incident took place in the formerly rebel-held neighbourhood of Saleheddin, Aleppo this morning and involved a five-storey block of flats.

One child was pulled out alive from the rubble after rescue teams toiled, many of them with their bare hands.

The workers had to remove the shattered breeze blocks that had buried him. He was the sole survivor of the collapse, the official SANA news agency reported.

Pictures taken at the scene show rescue workers comforting the stricken child as they worked hard to free him.

While others show the level of devastation wrought by the building collapse, as shattered bricks lie in a heap on the ground.

Saleheddin was heavily bombed before the army overran rebel districts with Russian support in late 2016.

What little reconstruction there has been among the ruins has been carried out privately. The state has limited public works to the restoration of basic infrastructure.

Many of the buildings around the block that caved in still bear the scars of the ferocious four-year battle for the northern city, with several on the brink of collapse.

Washington has estimated the costs of rebuilding Syria's devastated housing and infrastructure at between $300 billion and $400 billion.

But it warned last month that, while overthrowing President Bashar al-Assad was no longer a goal of US policy, it would contribute no reconstruction funds without fundamental reform in Damascus. </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.
A collapse of a building damaged by the war in Aleppo, Syria, kills 11 people.