Khaled Omar Harrah RIP

Khaled  Omar Harrah, who was briefly famous in 2014 when a video clip went viral showing him rescuing a two-month-old baby from the rubble of a Syrian regime airstrike, has himself been killed in another such strike.

This is not unusual. It is common for the Assad regime's aircraft to circle round and hit the same target again in the hope of killing rescue workers.

Khaled Omar Harrah became one of the "White Helmets" who are the volunteer search and rescue team in Aleppo, in 2014. He was one of about 3,000 volunteers in opposition-held areas of Syria who, working to a handbook for ARP wardens in Britain drawn up during the Blitz, are estimated to have saved more than 56,000 lives.

"For me this is the real Jihad" Mr Harrah said after saving the baby boy. "If I die saving lives, I think God would definitely consider me a martyr."

"Khaled was an ordinary man, a painter and decorator, who made the choice that his contribution to the Syrian crisis would be to risk his life to save others," said James Le Mesurier of the Mayday Rescue foundation. "There are literally dozens of images of them carrying women, children, old men, the dead, the wounded from buildings in Aleppo."


The headlines in reports of the conflicts in Syria and Iraq frequently report the foul deeds of the murderous blood-drenched monsters who have taken many innocent lives and brought destruction on a terrible scale to the region.

But for every such monster who revels in taking life there are heroes like Khaled Omar Harrah who are willing to risk and lose their lives to save others.

Rest in Peace

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