Five Syrian civil defense workers — known as the “White Helmets” — were killed in air strikes on April 26, according to Al Jazeera. A series of violent attacks swept Aleppo and the city’s outskirts, killing at least 35 people, including eight children.
According to Al Jazeera:
The Observatory and Civil Defence [White Helmets] colleagues said the attack appeared to have deliberately targeted them.
"The targeting was very precise," Radi Saad, a civil defence worker, told the Reuters news agency. "They were in the centre and ready to respond. When they heard warplanes in the area they did not think they would be the target."
The Syria Civil Defense, or “White Helmets,” is a group of about 2,800 volunteer rescue workers — organized initially, spontaneously, and later with international funding and training — that has saved tens of thousands of lives amid the ongoing violence in Syria. It has been called “the most dangerous job in the world.”
According to a 2015 report in Sojourners magazine:
The job itself has claimed the lives of more than 100 rescue workers—often while saving people between bombings. While double-tap bombings used to be a predictably spaced 15 minutes apart, allowing rescue workers an allotted period of time to save as many people as possible, in recent months these second strikes have been less predictable, which makes a difference in whether or not rescue workers can save lives and be safe while doing it.
Speaking at The Summit in 2015, Tim Dixon of Purpose Europe introduced justice leaders gathered to the work of the White Helmets, saying their heroism illustrates “how we might change some of the terms of this debate [on ISIS] with the prophetic imagination.”
See his talk, accompanied by a digital poem featuring the White Helmets, below.
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