A cry for mercy: A snapshot of Aleppo during Syria’s uprising

“He carried his son – the same way he had many times before – crossing the hall to the front door, where he crumbled.”

In December 2010, protests erupted in Tunisia, triggering similar demonstrations across the Middle East and North Africa, including in Egypt, Libya, Yemen and Syria. Ten years since the start of the Arab Spring, photographers who captured the years of uprising reflect on what they saw and what the events of the time meant to them. Manu Brabo is an award-winning Spanish photojournalist who covered the uprisings in Libya and Syria. He tells the story of a photograph he took in Aleppo in 2012. It was October 3, 2012, in the second year of the uprising against Bashar al-Assad’s government. Despite the efforts of the Syrian Armed Forces, the regime was losing control of vast areas of territory to the several armed groups fighting under the banner of the Free Syrian Army (FSA).