Toddler weeps for dead father in harrowing footage from Aleppo

Aleppo’s children at risk as UN reports 13 minors executed by President Bashar al-Assad forces and 100 more trapped in building under fire

Distressing footage of a crying man consoling a distraught little boy has emerged from the hellish final hours of the battle for the Syrian city of Aleppo.

Holding the toddler in his arms, the man, whose eyes are red from crying, tries to tell the child his father won’t be coming back as he repeatly asks for “baba.”

“Daddy went to heaven,” the man says, identified by a local journalist as the baby’s uncle.

The heartbreaking video is just one of thousands of similiar stories occuring in the embattled city right now as Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces regain control of the rebel-held east side of Aleppo after four years of fighting.

Regime bombing has been relentless in the past few days. Videos of the wounded and dying lying in the street during shelling have horrified people around the world. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights estimates that 415 civilians have been killed in regime air strike in the last month.

Several activists in the city recorded ‘farewell messages’ during which explosions and the whirr of warplanes and helicopters could be heard in the background.

Between 50,000 - 100,000 people, among them al-Qaeda linked rebels, were thought to remain in the last pockets of rebel resistance to the regime on Tuesday.

For those who avoid death in the rubble of aerial attacks, there is a fresh threat in the form of government allied Shia militias, who reportedly executed 82 civilians, including 11 women and 13 children, overnight on Monday. Unicef said 100 children were trapped without family members in a building under fire from government forces on Tuesday afternoon.

Many non-combatant activists including the doctors and aid workers left in the rebel enclave fear detention or execution at the hands of the regime, as has been the case in several other instances in Syria’s bloody civil war.

Last-ditch attempts to broker a ceasefire have not succeeded in any agreement between the Syrian government and rebel factions.