Life and death at the Dar Al Shifa hospital on Aleppo’s front line

Revisiting five months in a hospital that was at the heart of Syria’s rebellion.

Ten years ago, the Arab Spring erupted across the Middle East and North Africa. In Syria, months of mass protests against Bashar al-Assad’s government in 2011 led to a government crackdown, widespread unrest and years of civil war. In 2012, documentary photographer Narciso Contreras spent months in Aleppo documenting the war. Here he tells the story of five months in a hospital at the heart of the rebellion. It was November 21, 2012, when Bashar al-Assad’s forces targeted the Dar Al Shifa hospital in Aleppo with a missile strike. I had just returned from Aleppo to my home base in the Turkish border city of Antakya. Since July, I had been crossing to and fro into northern Syria to document the uprising and its aftermath at the medical unit. Now, I watched the news in shock, as the cameras moved steadily across the dimensions of the catastrophe.