Early one morning this summer Zaina Erhaim was woken by the whistling sound of a barrel bomb falling from a regime helicopter. She could tell that the bomb, packed with explosives and steel shrapnel, was going to land close to her apartment in rebel-held eastern Aleppo. Her husband, Mahmoud, told her not to be scared. He put his hands over her ears and tried to shield her body with his own.
Seconds later there was a deafening explosion. The whole building shook. The doors and windows blew inwards. Erhaim remembers hearing screams outside and saw a nearby building burning. It was an improvised school and nursery.
She and Mahmoud rushed to the scene. Men were pulling children from the rubble. The corpses of the dead