Raghat’s mother thought her village was a safe distance from Isis – but Syrians accuse Russia of targeting civilian areas
Five-year-old Raghat loved singing, nail polish, teasing her toddler sister, the alphabet she was starting to learn at nursery, and goofing for the camera. In the last photos of her, taken barely 10 minutes before the Russian bombs landed, she shows off a new bracelet and freshly painted nails with glee, then squeezes a kiss from her squirming baby sister.
“I only took my children back to Syria for six days,” says her mother, Suheer, her eyes welling up as she plays a video on her smartphone, bringing a shadow of her daughter momentarily back to life. Her son Hossein, only four himself, leans in to smooth away her tears. Too young to really understand why his sister has vanished, he comforts his mother with a soft patter of “mummy, no, mummy”.
Raghat now lies miles away, across the Turkish border in Syria, buried in the town of Habeet, near Idlib, where she died in October alongside her grandfather and her cousin Ahmad. When the attack finished she was found wrapped in Ahmad’s arms. A 28-year-old maths teacher, he had tried to race her to shelter when the first bomb fell.
They made it to a small dugout in the garden, but a bomb landed just beside the entrance, and Ahmad’s body was not a strong enough shield. Raghat survived the first blast, but died on the back of a motorbike as her family raced her to hospital. “We were supposed to be going home the next day,” Suheer says. “My husband never saw his daughter again.”
The family are one of hundreds ripped apart by more than two months of intense Russian bombing raids on opponents of President Bashar al-Assad, which victims and fighters say have strayed far behind frontlines. Coalition airstrikes led by the US have also killed civilians, but have stricter rules of engagement. There have been no reports of civilian casualties from the airstrikes launched on the al-Omar oilfield by British Tornado jets this week.
Syrians say Russians are not only reckless about choosing targets, but also appear to be intentionally bombing some civilian areas.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/dec/04/killed-after-posing-for-pictures-the-five-year-old-victim-of-russias-airstrikes-on-syria
