Nine-year-old Dia'a sat in the back of his father's car on the cool afternoon when a sniper fired a bullet at his heart. His brother Alaa, 15, was seated next to him. Their father sped through the streets desperate to flee shelling that was destroying their neighborhood in Dara'a, in southwest Syria.
The father saw a roadblock and decided to turn around. It was then that the sniper pulled the trigger.
Gregory Beals
The bullet pierced Dia'a's chest, missing the boy's heart by millimeters. Then it careened through his left shoulder and ricocheted into Alaa. Dia'a looked to his left and saw his brother slumped over. Nothing could stop him from passing into death.
Dia'a bled profusely. He did not feel his torso, only the pain that "cut my shoulder," he said. He was rushed to the border and then to a Jordanian hospital. He had lost more than half of the blood in his body. Doctors pumped him full of several units of blood and closed the wounds. The surgery took an hour.
Dia'a's mother, 46-year-old Ameena, thanked God for her son's survival. But in myriad ways, war had sapped her capacity for gladness. It felt like something inconceivable, physically impossible. "I can't be happy even if Dia'a is still alive," she said. "I've lost [my other] son and I cannot be happy."
Syria's war is killing and maiming the youngest and most innocent members of society. According to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, some 7,000 children, including 1,600 under the age of 10, have lost their lives. At least one million Syrian children are now refugees. Four million of Syria's population of 20 million has been displaced internally. Half of those are children.
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