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Saved from the rubble: Syrian girl given second chance by

rescuer
By Arwa Damon, Waffa Munayyer and Bryony Jones, CNN
Updated 1133 GMT (1933 HKT) September 15, 2016

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Young girl almost missed, counted for dead 03:04

(CNN) Before the civil war tore their country apart, Mohammed Alaa Al-Jaleel and Doha AlMohammed lived ordinary lives: He as an electrician, she as a schoolgirl.
Then the bombings began.
Now Al-Jaleel volunteers with an emergency response unit in Aleppo, pulling people out of the
wreckage after airstrikes hit the city.
That's how he met Doha.
She and her brothers and sisters were at home with their heavily pregnant mother and their father
when an airstrike hit their neighborhood, Al Haydariya.
"I remember that there was a plane striking when I was peeling oranges for my siblings," the 10year-old says. "After that all of a sudden the house was blown up."

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Doha, 10, was blown off the balcony of her family home in Aleppo by a barrel bomb blast.

"The plane dropped barrel bombs," Al-Jaleel remembers, gazing out of the cracked windscreen
to the wrecked city beyond. "We knew the area that was targeted was a residential area, where
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civilians live."
"We were running, looking around, when we found the children who were thrown off the balcony
into the street."
READ MORE: On Eid-al-Adha, Syria's children laugh again

Covered in blood, dust

Al-Jaleel and his team had already loaded several youngsters into the back of their makeshift
ambulance, tenderly scooping their limp, dust-covered frames up from the road.
They were about to head for the hospital when he glanced back and spotted Doha, who had
gone unnoticed in the chaos outside the shattered apartment building.

"I looked back and saw Doha on the ground," Al-Jaleel

says. "I don't know what it is that drove me to look again.
She was covered in rubble, you could not see her there,
but then I noticed her moving her shoulder."
"I was really afraid," Doha says. "My body was really
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hurting me from all the debris that fell on me. Then

someone came and carried me. I was crying a lot, and
Related Video: The challenges of getting
aid to Aleppo 01:50

bleeding."
"I carried her running to the ambulance as fast as I could
trying to save her life," Al-Jaleel says. "I felt she was still

alive."
Footage of the rescue shows him urging her to "stay strong!" as he lays her on the floor of the
white van, bloodied and drifting in and out of consciousness.
READ MORE: Aleppo doctors targeted while saving lives

Emergency surgery
Doha and her siblings were taken to hospital, where doctors were able to operate on her
abdominal wounds and stabilize her.
Her five-year-old sister Yasmin, who suffered more serious injuries, had to be taken across the
border to Turkey for treatment.
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Miraculously, nobody was killed in the blast.

But five months after the airstrike in April 2016, Yasmin is still in Turkey, living with her
grandparents who fled Syria two years ago.

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Doha and her brothers and sisters keep in touch with Yasmin through video calls.

The family keeps in touch via Facebook Messenger. On a video chat, Yasmin tells the rest of the
family: "I don't want to come back."
Her brother, eight-year-old Abdullah, asks why not.
"Because there are airstrikes," she says, pleading with them: "You come here and join me."
READ MORE: 'Death Road' stands in way of aid to Aleppo

Family's life in pieces

Right now, that is not an option: Turkey only opens the border for medical emergencies like
Yasmin's, which means many families like the Al-Mohammeds are stuck in Syria.
Doha's father Abu, a tailor who suffered back injuries in the attack and has been unable to work
since, says he would like to get his wife and children out of the country.

Until then, he has moved the family to a suburb of Idlib,

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where they are living in a house belonging to friends. It is

marginally safer there, he says: the airstrikes aren't as
bad, and healthier food is available for the children.
Doha says that, far from their ruined home, she feels lost,
her life in pieces: "Now I don't have a room, no bed, no
mattress. They were all destroyed by the bombing."
Related Video: Moment of joy for
Aleppo's children 00:50

But thanks to Al-Jaleel, the man who saved her, she can
laugh again: he has built a playground and cat sanctuary
for children trapped by the bloodshed going on around

them.
READ MORE: How to rebuild a war zone: Homs architect's vision
"I felt like she was my own daughter, my own child, that I would all my life care about her," he
says. "That's why every now and then I check on her and I bring her here to my garden."
This place, tucked away among the ruins of a once-beautiful city, offers Doha and others like her
the chance to steal a few moments of joy amid the heartache of war.

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