'Can't be alive anymore': Syrian girl tweets 'goodbye' before airstrikes destroy her home
A seven-year-old girl living in war-torn Syria has sent a desperate message to the world via her Twitter account, saying her goodbyes just hours before her house was bombed.
Bana Alabed, with the help of her mother, tweets live updates from the heart of East Aleppo and miraculously survived the airstrikes that robbed her of her home on Sunday.
“The army got in, this could be our last days sincerely talking. No Internet. Please please please pray for us,” Bana tweeted.
Less than an hour later she posted another chilling note:
“Last message – under heavy bombardments now, can’t be alive anymore. When we die, keep talking for 200,000 still inside. BYE.”
The bombings are believed to have killed at least a dozen residents but somehow Bana and her family escaped.
Her home was reduced to rubble in the blasts, with the child sharing a photo of herself covered in dust in the hours after the attacks.
Last message - under heavy bombardments now, can't be alive anymore. When we die, keep talking for 200,000 still inside. BYE.- Fatemah
— Bana Alabed (@AlabedBana) November 27, 2016
“Tonight we have no house, it’s bombed and I got in rubble. I saw deaths and I almost died,” she wrote.
Bana frequently posts photos of the bloodied bodies of her classmates who have died in the war, some who were killed on their way to school.
Government forces retook six rebel-held districts of eastern Aleppo over the weekend, forcing close to 10,000 civilians to flee as they pressed their offensive on Sunday to retake the city.
"Nearly 10,000 civilians have fled east Aleppo since the night of Saturday to Sunday," the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights confirmed.
"At least 6,000 of them went to the neighbourhood of Sheikh Maksoud, the rest went to government zones of Aleppo."
On Sunday, the 13th day of the operation, they took control of the adjacent neighbourhoods of Jabal Badra, Baadeeen Inzarat, Al-Sakan, al-Shaabi and Ain al-Tall, according to the Observatory.
Government forces are now "in control of most of the northern part" of Aleppo, according to the monitoring group.
Around 250,000 civilians, besieged for months in the east, have faced serious food and fuel shortages.
Once a commercial and industrial hub, Aleppo has seen some of the worst fighting in Syria's nearly six-year war.
