Why Bana loves the president of Turkey

Our December 3 crumb described a seven-year-old Syrian girl named Bana al-Abed, who tweeted about living in the bombed-out city of Aleppo. She tweeted pictures of her house covered by smoke after it was bombed. Her tweets reached 325,000 people. If you watched the news and saw the long lines of busses which were halted while trying to evacuate civilians from Aleppo recently, you may wonder what happened to her.

Bana and her family escaped Aleppo last Sunday after spending a full 24 hours on a bus without food or water. Her mother, Fatemah, says "We stayed like a prisoner, a hostage, but finally we arrived in Turkey and we thank God and all our friends who have supported us. We created our Twitter to tell the world what happened there. We are happy because our voice reached so many people." After arriving in Turkey, Bana was invited to meet President Recip Tayyip Erdogan (shown above), at the presidential palace in Ankara. A video of the meeting appears to show Bana telling the president, "Thank you for supporting the children of Aleppo, and helping us to get out from the war. I love you."