“This might be the last day you will hear my voice and see me,” says 10-year-old Yasmeen Qanouz, one of dozens of orphaned children still trapped in eastern Aleppo.
“Please get us out,” pleads the little girl, surrounded by almost 50 other children in a heartbreaking video from the city’s underground Moumayazoun Orphanage.
“We want to live like everyone else.”
The video, recorded by orphanage director Asmar Halabi and released by the Syrian American Medical Society, shows the children huddled together in winter hats, the youngest appearing to be a toddler.
“There are 47 children here and they are all my brothers and sisters,” continues Qanouz, who has lived in the orphanage since losing her parents in airstrikes two years ago.
“We all hope to get out of Aleppo and eat and drink,” she says, adding that the children can’t go outside because of airstrikes and shelling.
CNN could not confirm the authenticity of the video.
Lobna Hassairi from the Syrian American Medical Society told CNN Thursday that the orphanage was due to be evacuated, though she didn’t know whether this had happened yet.
Attempts to contact the orphanage’s director were not immediately successful.
Some 50,000 civilians are thought to remain inside the small pocket of eastern Aleppo still under rebel control, with the Syrian regime now on the brink of taking the whole city.
Evacuation plans under threat?
The video comes as a convoy of injured civilians hoping to flee eastern Aleppo came under sniper fire, putting a planned evacuation of rebel-held areas under threat, activists in the Syrian city claimed Thursday.
The alleged attack happened during a tenuous ceasefire. Rebels said the new ceasefire agreement was reached overnight after a previous one collapsed in less than 24 hours.
The International Committee of the Red Cross said it was now working alongside the Syrian Red Crescent to bring around 200 wounded people out of rebel-controlled districts.