Bana Alabed, girl who tweeted Syria horrors, escapes Aleppo with family

Bana Alabed, the 7-year-old girl who chronicled daily life in war-torn Syria, has evacuated Aleppo with her family.

On Monday morning, pictures and video of the young girl with her mother, Fatemah, at a gathering site set up by international aid groups circulated online.

Ahmad Tarakji, the president of the Syrian American Medical Society, a nonpartisan nonprofit that offers relief to Syrians in need, tweeted a picture of himself holding Bana. He said she was just one of many children who fled Aleppo for the countryside and that his organization was working with the Union of Medical Care & Relief Organizations and others to coordinate a response plan.

“I want to tell all the world how much kids and all people in east Aleppo are suffering from bombs and everything because there is no life there, so we created our Twitter to tell all the world what’s happened there,” Fatemah told the Syria-based Qasioun News Agency on Monday, with Bana by her side.

Fatemah thanked all of their supporters and said she is happy their voices reached so many people. During evacuation, she said, they were on a bus without food or water for 24 hours and felt like prisoners or hostages.

Though she is happy to have reached safety, she said it is saddening that they needed to leave their home country at all.

“I leave my soul there. I want to take our freedom there, not to be like refugees in other countries,” she said. “I want for my kids a good future.”

Bana became a symbol of the toll warfare has on children with her regular dispatches from eastern Aleppo, which has been under perpetual bombardment as Syrian strongman Bashar Assad, assisted by the Kremlin, seized the area from rebels. With the help of her mother, she would routinely tweet about daily life in the city and the horrors of war. She has gained more than 300,000 Twitter followers since the account was launched in September.

Their last tweet before evacuating — written by Fatemah on Sunday — beseeched Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdo?an and Turkish Minister of Foreign Affairs Mevlüt ?avu?o?lu to do whatever they can to make sure the cease-fire worked and help their family reach safety.

They made a similar appeal to United States first lady Michelle Obama last week and have been in contact with British novelist J.K. Rowling, who sent the young girl a complete digital set of her “Harry Potter” book series.

Supporters of the Alabed family hope that their appearance on Monday will finally quiet any speculation that their story was fabricated or merely propaganda by opposition forces. Skeptics would ask how they could tweet regularly when their neighborhood was under siege or why the little girl could speak English.

It’s worth noting that the Twitter account would occasionally go silent — or even go offline — prompting many followers to wonder whether Bana had been killed. Her mother has said that she studied English for three years and studied law. She told the BBC that she’s been teaching the language to her daughter since she was 4. She also learned how to spread a message from courses in politics and journalism.

The International Rescue Committee, which is dedicated to helping people suffering through the world’s worst crises, estimates that an average of 50 Syrian families are forces to flee their homes every single hour and that only 17,000 of 4 million Syrian refugees have resettled in other countries.

Overseen by the Red Cross and Red Crescent, the evacuation began on Dec. 15 but came to a temporary halt the following day along with a short-lived cease-fire. There were recriminations from each side of the conflict. AFP reported that evacuations recommenced Monday morning with thousands of Syrians leaving Aleppo for northern Syria.