A two-year-old Syrian boy who was left with horrific burns following an airstrike is now living a new life after a generous stranger in the UK helped him escape the country’s civil war.
Yousef Rajab’s home was hit by a missile fired by the Syrian regime or its foreign allies in 2015. The strike blew up a gas cylinder and engulfed his family’s house in flames, killing his brother and mother and leaving the toddler badly injured.
Thousands of miles away in Hertfordshire, Rohan Karat watched a news report showing Yousef’s plight and decided to begin raising money to help him get urgent treatment.
Mr Karat, who had recently become a father, told ITV News: “It was absolutely heartbreaking to see his situation. I don’t know what took over me, but I just felt that something needed to be done.”
He first raised enough money to help Yousef and his father, Muhammad Rajab, make the safe journey to Turkey, and then enough for them to find a home, where Mr Rajad has since started a new family.
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Yousef is now seven-years-old and enjoys school, drawing and playing with his two younger siblings.
Mr Karat is still funding his education, along with other elements of his life, through monthly donations with the help of a community group on Facebook.
“We arrived in Turkey, we had nothing. With the money we received we could afford medical treatment for Yousef,” Mr Rajab told ITV News.
“I want Yousef to learn English so he can someday talk to Rohan. He cared for Yousef like he was his own child.”
Yousef was too young to remember life in Syria, but he sometimes asks his father what caused his scars. Mr Rajab does not think he is old enough yet to hear the details.
Syria’s brutal civil war has raged for more than 10 years, resulting in the deaths of more than half a million people and displacing half the country’s population.
