’Let them know I was injured’

An eight-year-old boy who lost his legs in a cluster bomb dropped by Russian warplanes on Duma in Damascus countryside has defiantly asked for images of his injuries to be shown.

Nour, from Douma, sustained his horrific injuries on January 16 when a suspected cluster bomb fell on his house when he was playing in the yard.

His legs had to be amputated at the top, just five days after a charity had donated some new trainers to him.

For most of his short life Nour has known nothing but war and now his future has been irrevocably changed.

"I was out in the street, I heard the bomb explode so I went inside, when I was inside I got hit. The bomb exploded in the yard, it destroyed the stairs."

When the nurse changed the gauze on his injury, Nour tried to help and thanked him with a big hug.

A defiant symbol of survival and courage but Nour still cries at his injuries. "My legs are hurt," he says.

Show my picture to my friends and let them know about me.

Show the pictures of my legs and let my friends and their mothers know that I am injured.

Nour’s father showed ITV News where the bomb hit, with shrapnel marks peppering the wall.

Picking up Nour’s trainers, he said: "A charity gave him these, five days later the incident happened. He’d hardly worn them, now he can’t wear them any more."

Inside the house, there is no electricity and candles are their only source of light.

There is little fuel for the stove. He wants to bring his son home but it is no place for a boy with such catastrophic injuries.

"I want to bring Nour here from the infirmary but my house isn’t good for him, it is very cold," he added.

He says he is too frightened to send his other children, three daughters aged between four and 10, to school as daily bombing may hit them.

After almost five years, the world’s failure to end Syria’s  Assad’s war on the Syrian people could be felt hardest by the country’s children.