Traumatised Syrian toddler refuses to let go of nurse

A traumatised Syrian toddler has refused to let go of an emergency room nurse after he was injured in an airstrike which allegedly destroyed his home.

The young boy, who has visible cuts to the side of his face, was filmed clinging to the shoulder of a nurse at a hospital in Aleppo as he attempted to sit the toddler down to examine him.

With his little legs standing on an examination table the boy pressed his body into the nurse, wrapping his tiny arms tightly around the stranger’s neck.

Despite his best efforts to gently persuade the child to let go, the second the toddler felt space between them he desperately wriggled forward for contact and reassurance.

The video was posted online by the Syrian American Medical Society. It is not known when the video was taken or whether the child’s injuries were the result of a recent spate of ‘barrel bomb’ attacks on Aleppo.

“This is what #ChildrenOfSyria endure everyday,” a SAMS representative wrote in a post accompanying the video.

“This is the agony of #Syria’s children.”

At least two barrel bombs hit the largest hospital in the rebel-held side of Syria's Aleppo city overnight.

The facility, known as M10, had already been hit by heavy bombardment on Wednesday, along with the second-largest hospital in the area, in what UN chief Ban Ki-moon denounced as "war crimes".

The recent bombardment of Aleppo has been some of the worst in Syria's five-year civil war, leaving more than 220 people dead and turning residential buildings into rubble.

The World Health Organization has called Syria the most dangerous place in the world for health workers.

With AFP