Boy, dazed and bloodied, becomes the face of Aleppo

A photo of a 5-year-old boy, sitting stunned and bloodied in the back of an ambulance after an airstrike, has quickly become the face of the besieged city of Aleppo in northern Syria.

The boy, identified as 5-year-old Omran Daqneesh, was brought to a hospital known only as "M10" after an airstrike in the rebel-held neighborhood of Qaterji, according to Osama Abu al-Ezz, a doctor. He suffered head wounds, but no brain injury, and was later discharged, the Associated Press reported.

The image is a still shot from a video filmed and circulated by the Aleppo Media Center, an anti-government activist group, The Guardian reported. The group posted the clip to YouTube late Wednesday.

A man is seen in the video plucking the boy away from a scene of nighttime chaos and carrying him into the ambulance. The boy, whose face is covered with blood, looks at his hands and wipes them on the ambulance chair.

The image has been reposted thousands of times by people on social media, including by David Miliband, the former British foreign secretary who is now president of the International Rescue Committee.

“We were passing them from one balcony to the other,” said photojournalist Mahmoud Raslan, who took the iconic photo, according to the AP. A doctor at the hospital later reported eight dead, including five children.

Omran was rescued along with his three siblings, ages 1, 6, and 11, and his mother and father from their partially destroyed apartment building, according to Raslan.

“We sent the younger children immediately to the ambulance, but the 11-year-old girl waited for her mother to be rescued. Her ankle was pinned beneath the rubble,” he said.

Aleppo, a city of 2 million divided between pro- and anti-government camps, has been particularly hard hit by five years of civil war. More than 400,000 people have died in the conflict which has also led to the displacement of millions of Syrians.

Although numerous attempts to bring relief to the city in the past have failed, Russia said on Thursday that it is ready to support a U.N. proposal for weekly 48-hour cease-fires to ensure aid deliveries to the city, according to the foreign ministry. Russia said it backs an attempt to deliver goods next week as a "pilot project."

The statement comes only hours after Staffan de Mistura, the U.N. special envoy for Syria, had suspended the weekly meeting of a humanitarian task force after eight minutes out of frustration at the inability of the group, co-chaired by Russia and the U.S., to arrange a  ceasefire.

The U.S. and many Western allies support some of the rebel groups opposed to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who is backed by Russia.