The 7-Year-Old Girl Tweeting from Besieged Aleppo Has Been Evacuated

"Left her soul" in Aleppo
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Editor

The Turkish government has announced plans to take in the 7-year-old Aleppo girl who helped capture the world’s attention to the plight in the war-torn city with her tweets.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu described Bana Alabed as the girl “who announced the Aleppo massacre to the world on social media” and said that she and her family would be brought to Turkey, CNN reported.

Fatemah Alabed, Bana’s mother, sent a tweet Sunday urging Cavusoglu and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to help evacuate them. The country helped negotiate the ceasefire that made the evacuations possible.

Bana and her family had been safely evacuated to the Aleppo countryside, according to the Syrian American Medical Society. SAMS relief coordinator Zaher Sahloul tweeted that the girl survived siege and bombing, and Bana herself tweeted Monday that she had “escaped.”

Following the evacuation, Fatemah Alabed expressed her sadness after she “left her soul” in Eastern Aleppo. The family, including Bana’s two brothers, ages 5 and 3, was without food or water for 24 hours.

“But finally we arrived her and we thank God and all our friends who are supporting us,” the mother told Qasioun News.

Three months ago, Bana and her family began posting their experiences to Twitter as they were in imminent danger of being hit by airstrikes carried out by the Syrian regime and its Russian allies.

Bana has since become the poster child of her country’s conflict. She and her family had been in hiding since their home was reduced to rubble on Nov. 27.

On Sunday, evacuations of civilians and rebels from eastern Aleppo resumed after hours of delay.