In one of the latest 'Hero' videos, an eight-year-old Syrian boy risking his life to save his younger sister, caught in a sniper fire has become an online sensation.
The one-minute long video shows the brave 'hero' boy running towards a young girl, hiding behind a car, while being constantly fired on by snipers, who reportedly are said to be the government forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
At one point in the video (0:38), the eight-year-old even pretends to have been shot in the chest and falls to the ground. But then suddenly he gets up and pulling his sister out from behind a burnt car runs to safety, with the snipers continuing to shoot at them.
The two are then seen running to safety, with gunshots behind them kicking up the dust and the snipers missing their shots.
A group of men, who filmed the entire episode hiding behind the safety of a brick wall can be heard exclaiming "Allahu Akbar" (God is great), as the boy gets up and runs back to safety with his sister after dodging the bullets.
The video that was uploaded on Monday has gained major traction.
Experts told The Telegraph that they have no doubts on the authenticity of the footage.
The incident certainly is not the first time that Pro-Assad gunmen have targeted children in the nearly four years of the bloody civil war in Syria.
Since 2011, over 11,000 children have died in the war-torn country and many of them in similar sniper attacks, says London-based Oxford Research Group. The report claimed that at least 389 children in Syria under the age of 17 were killed by pro-government snipers.
Similarly CNN had reported citing a UN report that the Syrian government soldiers have subjected children to several inhuman practices, including being used as human shields.
There also have been incidents where children were beaten, blindfolded, subjected to stress positions, whipped with heavy electrical cables, scarred by cigarette burns, and in one instance which was recorded, subjected to electrical shock to the genitals because their siblings or parents were assumed to be members of the opposition or Free Syrian Army (FSA), or they themselves were suspected of being associated with FSA, the UN report had said.
