Omran Daqneesh

Omran Daqneesh (Arabic: عمران دقنيش‎, 2011-) is a Syrian boy who, at age five, gained media attention after footage of him injured in what was alleged to have been an air strike appeared on the Internet.

Daqneesh was injured on August 17, 2016, in an alleged Russian Air Force strike on the rebel-held al-Qaterji neighbourhood of Aleppo, Syria. He suffered a wound to his head and was taken to a hospital known as M10 and later discharged.

Daqneesh was rescued with his parents and three siblings, then aged one, six, and ten. His ten-year-old brother, Ali, died on August 20, 2016, of his injuries. The apartment building collapsed shortly after the family was rescued. Eight people died in the air strike, including five children. The footage was released by the Aleppo Media Centre, a Syrian opposition activist group.

The image of him sitting bloodied in an ambulance after being dragged from the rubble of his home caused international outrage and was widely featured in newspapers and social media. It has been compared with photographs of Alan Kurdi, a child refugee of the Syrian Civil War who drowned trying to reach Europe.

Chinese and Russian media, both allies of the Syrian Army, called the images "propaganda". Some international media have proposed that the image was staged.

In June 2017, new photos and videos of the boy emerged from Syrian government media. In an interview with Kinana Alloush, a presenter for Syrian government-run TV "who once took a selfie with the corpses of opposition fighters, Omran’s father said that his son had been used as a 'propaganda tool' by rebel forces, and that the family had always been pro-regime." His father also criticized rebel groups in Aleppo for attempting to exploit his family as propaganda to push for regime-change.