Published On 9/12/2025
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Last update: 11:01 (Mecca time)
In 2016, Syrian photographer Mahmoud Raslan took a famous photo of a child sitting inside an ambulance, covered in dust, with blood streaming from his face. He appeared to be staring in amazement at the photographer’s lens, minutes after he was rescued from under the rubble of his house, which was targeted by a raid in the Syrian city of Aleppo.
The child was 4 years old at the time, and his name was Imran Daqneesh, and his picture shook screens and social media platforms around the world.
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Yesterday, Monday, Omran appeared again during the Liberation Day celebration at the Conferences Palace in Damascus, in the presence of Syrian President Ahmed Al-Sharaa, years after that painful incident. He said in a brief comment: “They say that I lived through the bombing… but I don’t remember anything.”
He survived the Assad regime’s bombing in Aleppo. Child Omran is present during the Liberation Day celebration at the Conferences Palace in Damascus pic.twitter.com/DAAnJESJvB
– Syria Now – News (@AJSyriaNowN) December 8, 2025
On social media, tweeters recalled the details of what happened on August 17, 2016, when Russian and Syrian warplanes launched bombings on rebel-controlled areas in Aleppo, which led to the destruction of Imran’s family home and its collapse on top of them.
Then, the Aleppo Media Center broadcast a video on social media documenting the moment the child Omran was rescued by paramedic Ammar Hamami, who put him in an ambulance.
Do you know, Omran, my sister volunteered for the Syrian Civil Defense since the day she saw you dusty from the bombing? The first woman to become a martyr was a martyr in the Civil Defense. May God accept her. May God send you good days like yours, Imran.
– Raed Muhammad (@laes5570) December 8, 2025
Imran sat silent on the seat, without crying or screaming, with dust covering his body and blood staining his face. He wiped the blood from his forehead with his small hand, looked at it calmly, then wiped it on the seat, without any reaction to the horror of the situation.
Later, other children, including his sister, arrived in the car, all in a similar condition, but Imran was the first to be rescued from under the rubble, which earned him the attention of millions around the world.
Sorry, Imran
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God suffices me, and He is the best disposer of affairs#Imran #Imran_under_the_rubles #Child_Imran pic.twitter.com/ydQgnjcNVc– Adel Ali Bin Ali (@AdelAliBinAli) August 19, 2016
Activists also re-published a video of the American CNN anchor crying while showing the report of Omran’s photo, and many linked his scene to the photo of the Syrian child Aylan Kurdi, who was found drowned on a beach in Turkey after the boat carrying his family sank.
One of them said that the scene of Omran wiping the blood from his forehead, and the scene of Ilan lying on the sand, are two moments that are impossible to forget, stuck in the memory and linked to the name of the Syrian revolution. Thank God that Imran is still well, and I really hope that he will always be well.
Everything we run away from comes back to us in different masks
The past does not age, but rather changes its features
To sit next to us in the present
What we think is buried rises from its ashes and knocks on our doors with a voice we know, even if time has changed it
We discover that escape was not salvation
Rather, it is a long way back to the same point
Where the truth awaits us without a mask pic.twitter.com/wtxLCKwGk7— Sa. Alhilaly 💙🌹 (@s_alhil33572) December 8, 2025