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He is young -- one witness puts him at five years old, as old as the Syrian war itself. But his chubby arms and legs and the way he clings to the man who pulled him from the rubble of his bombed-out home suggest he is younger, maybe still a toddler.
He lived with his mother, father, brother and sister in the Syrian city of Aleppo, a contact on the ground tells CNN.
He and his family were injured when their house was destroyed by an airstrike Wednesday. Miraculously, everyone in his immediate family survived. Activists blame the Syrian regime and Russia for the bombings.
Aleppo, in northern Syria, has been besieged for years during that country's civil war. Thousands of people have been killed there, including 4,500 children, and many lives have been upended.
Omran's family is among them.
One boy's story
The haunting, heartbreaking video of Omran, posted by the Aleppo Media Center, has been circulating on social media.
It shows a civil defense worker carrying the little boy to an ambulance. His cartoon character T-shirt is covered in dust, the left side of his face is bloody. He is silent despite the cacophony around him.
He was not crying at any point during the rescue.
"He was in extreme shock," according to a spokesman for the Aleppo Media Center, an activist group.
He looks dazed as he sits on the vehicle's orange seat, his hands on his lap, as he waits to be treated, as he waits for somebody to help him.
He raises his left hand to his eye and feels the area around his temple as if he has been hit there. He wipes his face and looks down at the blood.
But Omran has had a lucky escape -- he appears to have been one of the first pulled out of the rubble before his parents, the Aleppo Media Center says.
CNN