The truth is foreign photographers and video journalists can’t offer as good coverage as the Syrians themselves. We’re regularly beaten by activist and university students who are quicker, braver and know their people and conflict. They’ve revealed the massacres and atrocities simply impossible for foreigners to confirm. All we offer is some objectivity and criticism. It’s not wanted, but need be as the war’s become an incoherent slaughter of citizen fighters and civilians.

A wounded boy looks clueless at a world that has just crushed him, outside a hospital in Aleppo. He asks the old man if the covered sheet on the ground next to him, is his father. “No, no” the older man says hugging the boy.

Ahmed, 12, from Sheik Faris neighborhood lost his father when a shell smashed their home.

“I saw the plane bombing and the explosion and shrapnel,” Ahmed told the men, as if for my camera. “I spoke to my father and he couldn’t speak. He….”

Man: “Your father is dead,” the old man said hugging Ahmed close to him, and shouts of Allah Akbar. After a teenage rebel sat on the steps next to him, looking uncomfortable.

Shot of Ahmed pointing to the covered body on the street outside- “This is my father?”

Man: “No, no”