graphic warning - multiple images
This photo, provided Tuesday, April 4, by the activist Idlib Media Center, shows dead children after a suspected chemical attack in the rebel-held city of Khan Sheikhoun, Syria. Dozens of people were killed, according to multiple activist groups.
This photo, provided Tuesday, April 4, by the activist Idlib Media Center, shows dead children after a suspected chemical attack in the rebel-held city of Khan Sheikhoun, Syria. Dozens of people were killed, according to multiple activist groups.
Edlib Media Center, via AP
A man carries a child at a makeshift hospital in Khan Sheikhoun. Activists have blamed the Syrian regime for the attack. In an apparent reference to the attack, two state-run Syrian media outlets reported that there was an explosion at a "rebel poison gas factory" in the countryside of Idlib province. The government has denied using chemical weapons in the past.
A man carries a child at a makeshift hospital in Khan Sheikhoun. Activists have blamed the Syrian regime for the attack. In an apparent reference to the attack, two state-run Syrian media outlets reported that there was an explosion at a "rebel poison gas factory" in the countryside of Idlib province. The government has denied using chemical weapons in the past.
Edlib Media Center via AP
A child's body is seen in Khan Sheikhoun.
A child's body is seen in Khan Sheikhoun.
Firas Faham/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
In this photo provided by the Idlib Media Center, doctors treat a child after the suspected attack.
In this photo provided by the Idlib Media Center, doctors treat a child after the suspected attack.
Edlib Media Center via AP
A baby's dead body is covered. Many of the casualties came as a result of asphyxiation, local doctors say.
A baby's dead body is covered. Many of the casualties came as a result of asphyxiation, local doctors say.
Firas Faham/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
A dead baby is seen in the aftermath of the attack. "I've never seen anything like it, beyond description," said Fares al-Jundi, a doctor who spoke with CNN. He lives in a nearby village and rushed to the hospital after the airstrikes.
A dead baby is seen in the aftermath of the attack. "I've never seen anything like it, beyond description," said Fares al-Jundi, a doctor who spoke with CNN. He lives in a nearby village and rushed to the hospital after the airstrikes.
Sadduldin Zaidan /Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
Al-Jundi described how whole families were killed: They died of asphyxiation, and foam covered their mouths. Many died suddenly. "I believe this horrible memory will stay with me for the rest of my life," al-Jundi said.
Al-Jundi described how whole families were killed: They died of asphyxiation, and foam covered their mouths. Many died suddenly. "I believe this horrible memory will stay with me for the rest of my life," al-Jundi said.
Sadduldin Zaidan /Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
An unconscious Syrian child receives treatment at a hospital in Khan Sheikhoun.
An unconscious Syrian child receives treatment at a hospital in Khan Sheikhoun.
OMAR HAJ KADOUR/AFP/Getty Images
This photo provided by the Idlib Media Center shows victims of the suspected attack.
This photo provided by the Idlib Media Center shows victims of the suspected attack.
Edlib Media Center via AP
Civil defense workers try to reduce the effects of toxic gas as they carry out search-and-rescue missions in Khan Sheikhoun.
Civil defense workers try to reduce the effects of toxic gas as they carry out search-and-rescue missions in Khan Sheikhoun.
Firas Faham/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
Suspected chemical attack in Syria

Story highlights

NEW: President Trump moved to act after seeing images from the attack

Graphic photos from the scene show attack's smallest victims

CNN  — 

Warning: This article contains graphic images of dead children.

The images were shocking. Children who suffocated in their final moments. Little ones who died horrible deaths in a war zone in Syria.

The images moved people around the world to call for action. In Washington, they moved a President to make a tough decision – to strike the alleged perpetrators – a senior administration official told CNN.

“No child of God should ever suffer such horror,” President Donald Trump said Thursday night after ordering the US military to strike an airfield in Syria with more than 50 cruise missiles.

Twenty-six children were among the more than 80 people killed in Tuesday’s attack.

An unconscious Syrian child receives treatment at a hospital in Khan Sheikhun, a rebel-held town in the northwestern Syrian Idlib province, following a suspected toxic gas attack on April 4, 2017. A suspected chemical attack killed at least 58 civilians including several children in rebel-held northwestern Syria, a monitor said, with the opposition accusing the government and demanding a UN investigation. / AFP PHOTO / Omar haj kadour (Photo credit should read OMAR HAJ KADOUR/AFP/Getty Images)
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Video shows gas attack aftermath
01:23 - Source: CNN

We don’t know what type of nerve agent was used in the alleged chemical attack Tuesday in Idlib.

If the attack involved sarin, which was used in a 2013 attack in the Syrian capital of Damascus, its victims may not have died quickly. Nerve agents can take several minutes to kill. People choke as the muscles that control breathing spasm and shut down. Bodily functions can’t be controlled.

As images from the attack show, words fall short of the horror.

A doctor at the scene became emotional talking about the suffering he had witnessed, of the dead and the living. Fares al-Jundi told CNN entire families died together, their mouths covered in foam. The wounded blanketed the floors of the hospital where Jundi was.

“I’ve never seen anything like it, beyond description,” he said.

And that is why such harrowing photographs, painfully close and unsparing in their depictions of death, are necessary to understand what exactly is going on here.

A voice of the war shares the unspeakable

Warning: This section contains graphic images of dead children.

Bana Alabed, a Syrian girl who gained worldwide notoriety for tweeting during the Syrian regime’s siege on Aleppo, shared more graphic photos of the aftermath of the chemical attack.

Alabed and her family were evacuated from Aleppo in December 2016, but the girl has continued to serve as a window into the suffering of her people.

In one photograph, children are hosed down, their bodies curled and stiff with death. “Dear world, today these children were murdered with chemical in Idlib,” she wrote. “Shame on you killers, shame on you. Shame on you, shame on you…”

In another photograph shown in the gallery above, half a dozen boys appear to be loaded into the back of a truck, tangled up in each other. They have been stripped of their clothes, their limbs contorted and skin splotched red. Some of them have their eyes closed. Those that do not look straight up with wide, empty eyes.

“This is today in Syriad in #Idlib,” Alabed says.

It does not go unnoticed that the 7-year-old Alabed is sharing images that no parent would ever want their child to see.

But the thousands of children who are endangered and dying in Syria do not get to hide behind a black bar. You can look away from a photograph, but for them it is their lives – and deaths – that are depicted.