The father of a six-year-old boy trapped in war-torn Syria has launched an impassioned plea for the Government to help him escape the bloody conflict “before it is too late”.
Birmingham born Muadh Zain has seen his uncle killed by shrapnel, his temporary home reduced to rubble, and scores of locals slaughtered by bombs during the three years he has been stuck inside the rebel-stronghold city of Daraa.
His father, finance worker Wael Zain, said his son is so traumatised by the horrors he has stopped speaking and clings to his mother, too frightened to leave her side.
Mr Zain, who works for financial services giant Allianz in London’s Canary Wharf, says he has begged the Foreign Office to intervene and get his son out of the war zone, but claims his pleas have fallen on deaf ears because the boy’s mother is Syrian.
He said: “My son is a British child. The Government has a real responsibility to act, but they aren’t.
“I wake up each day fearing the worst. I’m taking every hour as it comes, but I just don’t know what is going to happen. It is so unpredictable.
“I want my son to be safe. I don’t want him to be flown home in a coffin.”
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Muadh spent the first years of his life in Birmingham, but moved to Syria with his mother Doha three and a half years ago after his parents split up.
Mr Zain, 30, said the move was only meant to be temporary, but civil war broke out in 2011 and as the violence quickly escalated they were unable to escape.
