Syrian Hospitals Are Being Bombed And No One Is Paying Attention

By Brianna Acuesta at trueactivist.com

Hundreds of innocent people have been killed in Aleppo, Syria in recent weeks from a surge of lethal strikes and the media is completely ignoring it.

Aleppo, the largest city in Syria, has been plagued with airstrikes for the last two weeks and the targets have included hospitals, the most vulnerable and essential places in a country at war with itself.

Though the airstrikes did not begin two weeks ago and have instead been used as an attack against the city’s citizens for years now, the attacks have recently increased exponentially and hundreds have lost their lives.

The Logical Pakistani reported on May 5th that,

“In the past 8 days, 260 airstrikes, 110 artillery strikes, 18 Missiles and 68 bombs have struck and killed innocent lives.”

That doesn’t take into account any of the attacks and deaths since then, and yet in the last few weeks there have been minimal new reports of these tragedies in the media as a show of concern and support.

A new trend on Twitter started by those affected by the terrible war and those who are sympathetic to the rising number of casualties is the hashtag #AleppoIsBurning. It represents the constant fire throughout the city after each airstrike, artillery strike, and bomb hits a new target.

One recent target was Al Quds hospital, which serves as the main pediatric hospital in eastern Aleppo, resulting to the death of 55 people. Amongst the deceased were children, one of the city’s last remaining pediatricians, and a number of health care professionals attempting to help the war victims.

This surge in fighting has led most of the remaining health care professionals to flee the country, leaving civilians with less and less help as the violence continues.

Outraged people have pointed out that Facebook has completely ignored the dangerous situation in Aleppo by not providing a safety check-in feature like it did with Brussels and Paris. As a means of protest, thousands have pledged to deactivate their Facebook accounts and many have made their profile photos red to protest the bombings in Aleppo.

Facebook has responded by explaining that they won’t provide a safety check-in “in ongoing crisis like war” because it’s impossible to know if someone is “truly safe.”

One Twitter user said:

“This is what helplessness truly looks like; when the most you could do is deactivate your Facebook account.”

It’s speculated that it’s the Syrian government that is bombing Aleppo, although the government denies any involvement in the assaults.

Most recent statistics show that one Syrian is killed every 25 minutes, and the most recent reports from January 2016 have shown that 29,686 people have been killed in the city since the war began. This number has increased by the thousands since that last report, and the UN states that 400,000 people have been killed in the last five years as a result of the war.

A Facebook user posted:

“Dear Mark Zuckerberg
Why can’t our families and friends in Aleppo check in on Facebook to ensure their safety and wellbeing?
Why is there not an option for our profile pictures to show the Syrian flag so we can show our solidarity with Aleppo?
Are we not human?”

Facebook is clearly not the main problem here, nor are they the only major website turning a blind eye to the Syrian Civil War; however, their participation in ignoring this crisis is part of a much larger issue in which the Western media is blacking out Eastern problems and concerned citizens are trying to combat it any way that they can.

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