Bana Alabed, a 7-year-old girl who had been tweeting from the rebel-held section of Aleppo, suddenly went silent days after she reported her home had been bombed and the family was on the streets.
Alabed has more than 200,000 followers and has tweeted about life in Aleppo under rebel control, growing increasingly urgent in recent weeks as reports of the Syrian army fighting to take back control from the rebels intensified.
After tweeting her house was bombed on Nov. 27, Alabed’s tweets were interspersed with tweets from her mother Fatemah and took on a more desperate tone. The mother and daughter tweeted that Bana had a minor injury after the bombing, that they were on the run, and that they were sick and had no medicine or clean water.
On Sunday, Alabed's Twitter account disappeared altogether but later returned.
The last few tweets talk about evacuating the children out of Aleppo and that Fatemah thought the army would capture them.
For about 24 hours, no one knew what had become of the family. On Monday afternoon, Fatemah tweeted, “Under attack. Nowhere to go, every minute feels like death. Pray for us. Goodbye.”
Aleppo has been under attack since 2012 when rebels took control of part of the city. Many of the residents have fled the city because of the bombardment. Alabed’s mom created the Twitter account for Bana in September to chronicle their lives as a major offensive to recapture Aleppo was launched by the Syrian Army, CNN reported.
After the Twitter account went dark Sunday, followers began to tweet under the hashtag #whereisBana, including author J.K. Rowling who had sent Alabed a set of "Harry Potter" novels in ebook form after she said she liked to read to forget about the war.
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