Doug Stanglin

USATODAY

Ali Daqneesh, the older brother of a Syrian boy whose face has become a symbol of the horror of the country's civil war, died Saturday of injuries sustained in the same airstrike that destroyed the family's home, according to the Aleppo Media Center.

Ali, 10, had been in critical condition since Wednesday, when the blast hit the apartment in the Qaterji neighborhood of the northern Syrian city of Aleppo, the anti-government opposition group confirmed to USA TODAY by email.

Photos of Ali's 5-year-old brother, Omran, quickly spread worldwide after the media center posted a YouTube video showing him, dazed and bloodied, being put into an ambulance.

A man is seen in the video plucking the boy away from a scene of nighttime chaos and carrying him into the ambulance. Omran, whose face is covered with blood, looks at his hands and wipes them on the ambulance chair. He suffered head wounds, but no brain injury and was later discharged.

The boys' mother remains in critical condition.

Photojournalist Mahmoud Raslan, who took the iconic photo told the Associated Press that rescuers pulled three bodies from the rubble of the airstrike before reaching Omran and Ali. “We were passing them from one balcony to the other,” Raslan said.

Aleppo, a city of 2 million divided between pro- and anti-government camps, has been particularly hard hit by five years of civil war. More than 400,000 people have died in the conflict, which has also led to the displacement of millions of Syrians.

Although numerous attempts to bring relief to the city in the past have failed, Russia said on Thursday that it is ready to support a U.N. proposal for weekly 48-hour ceasefires to ensure aid deliveries to the city, according to the foreign ministry. Russia said it backs an attempt to deliver goods next week as a "pilot project."