Orphaned Children in Aleppo Plead for Evacuation in New Video
Evacuations were underway today, but the children were still in Aleppo.
— -- Orphaned children in the besieged Syrian city of Aleppo can be seen pleading to be evacuated to safety in a new video obtained by ABC News.
In September, ABC News profiled an underground orphanage in eastern Aleppo, where many children have sought refuge from years of devastating war. In a video message recorded Wednesday, children at the orphanage plead for an evacuation following the collapse of another cease-fire between Syrian rebels and forces loyal to the government.
“Today might be the last time you see me and hear my voice,” one 10-year-old girl says in the video, surrounded by the other children at the orphanage. “Please help us get out of Aleppo.”
The girl is one of 47 children living at the orphanage, which was forced underground in order to protect the children from the life-threatening situation above them. The children there range in age from 3 to 14 years old, and have either lost their parents or have parents who can no longer care for them.
As of today, the children were still in Aleppo. But they were hoping to leave as a second cease-fire took hold and an operation to evacuate thousands of residents from the last rebel-held enclave of east Aleppo got underway today.
“We have not been able to leave because of the airstrikes and we are scared of the continuous shelling,” the girl says in the video. “All we want is to live like any other child in this world.”
"We hope to eventually get the children to Turkey, where we are working on setting up another orphanage," a member of the Afkar Foundation, which runs the Aleppo orphanage, told ABC News. He asked not to be named for fear of reprisals by pro-Assad forces. Throughout the battle for Aleppo, the custodians had hoped to be able to keep the orphans in their familiar surroundings to avoid adding to their trauma but that wasn't possible in the end.
Some 3,000 civilians, including children and 40 injured, have been evacuated to Idlib, a rebel stronghold in the western countryside of Aleppo, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross. More civilians are to be evacuated but the process could take days, the humanitarian group said.
The evacuation was negotiated as part of the latest cease-fire deal. The truce marks the end of years of fighting and a months-long government siege of eastern Aleppo -- a strategic victory for President Bashar al-Assad, returning the last rebel stronghold in a big Syrian city to his control.
The conflict in Syria has caused the largest humanitarian crisis since World War II, with more than 8 million children in danger, according to UNICEF.
What began as a local uprising against Assad in 2011 slowly burgeoned into an international war involving the United States, Russia, Iran and almost all of Syria's neighbors. Military planes belonging to the Syrian regime and Russia, which began its military operations there against ISIS and other militant groups last September, regularly targeted rebel-held areas.
ABC News’ Lena Masri and Kirit Radia contributed to this report.