Syrian doctors comfort wounded children with chocolate

When eight-year-old Hana suffered shrapnel wounds to her leg last week in the central Syrian city of Homs, doctors at a makeshift clinic treated her without anesthesia and gave her chocolate for comfort.

Hana was wounded in shelling by Syrian government forces, who have been pounding Homs for more than 10 days. Activists say dozens have been killed and medical supplies are running out in the city, which is the centre of the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad.

"I was taken to a small room underground next to our house and the nice doctor gave me chocolate and told me 'it's going to hurt a little, but you eat the chocolate and you will be OK'," Hana said, pointing to her bandaged leg in a house in Beirut.

Hana's father, Bahaa al-Homsi, fled Homs to neighbouring Lebanon with his wife and two children at the weekend and has no plans to return unless the fighting stops.

"My daughter fainted in front of my eyes as the doctor was removing the shrapnel," al-Homsi told dpa. "We left our house early in the morning and walked through alleys, until we reached some areas that we had to cross under shelling."

"Then, we continued in a car to the borders with Lebanon," he said, adding that the trip was arranged by activists and members of the rebel Free Syrian Army.

"I had to carry my daughter throughout the trip and I kept telling her that we will soon be safe so she would not cry while we were walking in the woods with the smugglers," he said.

Hana could not sleep for two nights after the operation to remove shrapnel from her leg.

"I was sitting in the room with my brother and suddenly we heard a big noise and I felt that something hot hit my leg," she said, recalling the incident.

The relative safety of Beirut has done little to comfort Hana, whose experience sometimes prevents her from sleeping at night. She says she dreams of an armed man taking her back to Homs.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay on Monday said the Security Council's failure to pass an Arab League-backed resolution calling on al-Assad to step down had emboldened the government to "launch an all-out assault in a effort to crush dissent with overwhelming force."

Russia and China, Syria's traditional allies, this month vetoed a Western- and Arab-backed resolution calling on al-Assad to step down and hand over power to his deputy. The Syrian government, which says it is fighting foreign-backed armed gangs, has rejected the plan.

The Arab League at the weekend called for an Arab-UN peacekeeping mission in Syria to stop the violence.

"They (Syrian government) are simply killing children and let them bleed to death just because their parents were calling for freedom and democracy," al-Homsi said.

The UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) said this month that hundreds of children have been killed and hundreds more detained since anti-government protests broke out 11 months ago.

Al-Homsi wants to take his family abroad "to raise his kids in a peaceful atmosphere away from violence."