Boris Johnson urged to save 10-year-old girl shot by sniper and trapped in Syria

Ghina Ahmad Wadi is in extreme pain with a complex bone fracture and severed nerve in her thigh

Ghina at home in Madaya, Syria (Courtesy of Amnesty International)

Boris Johnson has been urged to use his influence as Foreign Secretary to help a 10-year-old girl receive urgent medical attention after she was shot in the leg by a government sniper.

Ghina Ahmad Wadi was on her way to buy medicine for her mother when she was shot in her left thigh at a checkpoint in the besieged Syrian town of Madaya ten days ago.

Her aunt Fadah Jassan, a British citizen who lives in London, has launched a desperate appeal to the government to help evacuate Ghina from the town, where there is no access to critical medical equipment and expertise.

Trapped in Madaya under the control of government forces backed by fighters from the Hezbollah militia, Ghina is in unbearable pain and needs surgery on a complex bone fracture and severed nerve in her leg.

With support from Amnesty International, Ms Jassan has called on Mr Johnson and the UK Foreign Office as a key member of the International Syria Support Group to spark action from US and Russia and help evacuate Ghina.

“With Ghina’s desperately-worried aunt here in the UK, we’d like the UK Government to step in to offer its immediate assistance,” said Kristyan Benedict, Amnesty’s campaign manager for Syria.

“We hope the evacuation can take place as soon as possible – ideally in the next 24 hours,” Mr Benedict told the Independent. “The UN say they are ready to evacuate children like Ghina from Madaya."

"The UK can and should explore every option to see that this happens.”

Last week Syrian President Basha al-Assad’s denied multiple requests from Ghina’s family’s to allow her to be moved to a better-equipped hospital in the capital Damascus or neighbouring Lebanon, according to Amnesty.

The UN estimates half a million people are living under siege in Syria and NGOs say around 65 people in Madaya have died of starvation and malnutrition since it was pinned down by government forces using “starve or surrender” tactics over a year ago.

In April, relief agencies evacuated around 250 wounded people from Madaya and nearby Zabadani and 250 more from other besieged Syrian towns in one of the largest humanitarian operations so far in the five-year conflict.

Fadah Jassan, Ghina’s aunt, has lived in the UK all her life and used to visit her mother’s side of the family in Syria every summer before the war began.

“It’s breaking my heart to think of little Ghina suffering like this,” Ms Jassan told Amnesty. “If the UK government can help my niece, then I’d beg them to do so.”

“I know Ghina’s just one among many thousands of children in Syria who’re going through things they shouldn’t have to, but she can be helped relatively easily and we need to do all we can to make that happen.”

In its December 2015 report on the war-torn nation, the UN said only 10% of its requests for aid convoys to access hard-to-reach and besieged areas in Syria had been granted in the past year.

Amnesty is putting pressure on the US and Russia, one of the main backers of the Syrian government, to provide safe transit for a Red Cross medical vehicle to reach Ghina and other injured children in future.

Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson (AFP/Getty)

Mr Johnson said Britain must not become “inured to the desperate suffering of millions of people across Syria just because the conflict there has become so intractable and difficult to solve.”

“We must secure sustained humanitarian access and an end to the indiscriminate regime and Russian attacks on civilian areas, including medical centres,” he said in a statement released to the Independent regarding the humanitarian situation in Aleppo and across Syria.

“Yesterday I spoke to Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, and urged him to do this.”

In response to Ghina’s plight, a Foreign Office spokesperson said: “The UK has consistently called for full and unhindered humanitarian access, and as a first step to support the UN proposal for 48 hour pauses.

“We have also led the way in responding to the Syria crisis since day one and we are supporting the UN to deliver aid in hard to reach and besieged areas of Syria.

“While greater progress is needed, more than 500,000 civilians have been reached during the cessation of hostilities, and hundreds have been medically evacuated from several besieged areas. UK will continue to push for greater humanitarian access."

The World Health Organisation said today that two conjoined twin boys, born three weeks ago, were being evacuated across rebel stronghold lines to Damascus Children's Hospital – the first of at least 20 patients who need urgent transfers to be saved, the World Health Organization (WHO) said.

Moaz and Nawras were born conjoined in Zahra hospital in eastern Ghouta, a rebel bastion and rural suburb of the capital. Syrian doctors abroad sought help from the WHO, the United Nations health agency.

“The hospital is under-supplied and unable to provide the twins with the surgery they need to survive,” said a letter by the Syrian American Medical Society.

“The twins, the mother and the aunt are now being evacuated to the Children's Hospital [in Damascus],” Elizabeth Hoff, WHO's representative in Syria, told Reuters on Friday.

An ambulance of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent was transporting them, she said. “We have been negotiating for medical evacuation for some days now.”