Amazing photos emerge of young lads swimming in flooded bomb craters in Syria
Under-siege locals say it's great to see some kind of normality amid the bloodshed
AMAZING photos have emerged from war-torn Syria showing boys swimming in water-filled bomb craters in the devastated and divided city of Aleppo.
The pro-opposition Aleppo Media Centre claims the huge craters are the result of an attack by President Bashar al-Assad's government forces.
"Whatever Assad has done in Aleppo, life is not over, its children make a new life in every site destroyed by his rockets," reads the caption.
Some two million people are trapped by the fighting in and around the historic and once beautiful city.
The UN has called for a 48-hour "humanitarian pause" to allow the safe delivery of food and medicine to the both the rebel-held east and government-controlled west.
It also wants to carry out repairs to the city's war-ravaged electricity and water systems- as summer temperatures soar in excess of 35C (95F).
Officials from the rivsld US and Russia were expected to meet this week to discuss how to bring about the pause.
Aleppo, once Syria's commercial and industrial centre, has been divided roughly in two since 2012.
However, fighting escalated in early July, when government forces encircled the rebel-held east and stepped up air strikes.
A month later, a rebel offensive broke the siege and severed the government's main route into the west of the city.
The photos of the boys were taken on Wednesday night, two weeks after the Media Centre's image of a young boy from Aleppo who was hurt in an air strike caused worldwide outrage.
Five-year-old Omran Daqneesh was photographed sitting alone in an ambulance, caked in dust and blood and looking dazed, after being pulled from the rubble of his home in a rebel-held area.
His 10-year-old brother, Ali, later died from his injuries in hospital.