(ANSA) - Rome, February 14 - A girl of one and half years old has frozen to death in the arms of her father in northwestern Syria as he tried to take her to a hospital in Afrin on foot from a makeshift IDP camp. The family had originally been displaced from Eastern Ghouta when the Syrian government took the area from opposition forces, and had been living in a tent in Ma'rata, a village in the Aleppo governorate with her family. The little girl, Iman Mahmoud Laila, had begun to suffer respiratory problems due to the extreme cold of the past few days and without heating. Her father thus decided to take her to a hospital in Afrin two hours away on foot, but the little girl arrived dead at the hospital. Hundreds of thousands have been displaced towards the Turkish border in recent weeks due to an ongoing Syrian government offensive backed by Russian forces.
    Sources on the ground report that other children have also died from the cold.(ANSAmed).