Can this sweet little girl get out of Aleppo alive?

Every morning, after the children go to school, I turn on my computer to check that Bana Alabed is alive and unharmed. I do the same at night. I have never met Bana. She is a sweet-faced, skinny seven-year-old girl who tweets from rebel-held east Aleppo with the help of her mother, Fatemah, an English teacher. Last weekend, as the Syrian government, Russian and Hezbollah forces took over north-eastern Aleppo amid heavy bombardments, Bana tweeted: ‘Tonight we have no house. It’s bombed and I got in rubble. I saw deaths and nearly died.’ As she and her family contemplated their rapidly narrowing options, Bana wrote to her escalating number of followers: ‘I want to live, I don’t want to die.’

At first Bana’s account showed her daily life with her mother and two younger brothers in Aleppo’s al-Shaar district. At home Bana was often reading or writing, or appearing in short videos in which, in her endearing sing-song English, she thanked Twitter friends for their good wishes. The next tweet, however, might show a nearby explosion or its catastrophic aftermath. Recently Fatemah tweeted the author J.K. Rowling, asking how Bana could read the Harry Potter books. Rowling sent them in e-book form, and Bana responded with a picture of herself holding up a hand-drawn thank-you sign.

Bana is good at making signs. In one video, she walked down a former street, now piled high with grey-white rubble and twisted metal, and held up a multicoloured placard saying: ‘Stand With Aleppo. Please Stop The Bombing And End The Siege.’ Twitter followers can send emojis, prayers and exhort Bana to take care, whatever ‘care’ might mean in the circumstances. But they cannot protect her. Following Bana is an exercise in powerlessness.