Idlib's humanitarian crisis: Plight of Syrian children left suffering and dying during attacks

• Video report by ITV News Correspondent Emma Murphy

• Warning this article may contain distressing images

The civil war in Syria has demonstrated some of the worst inhumanity of the 21st Century.

Almost nine years on, it has gotten worse as Syria's children are still in the firing line and still left suffering, still dying.

• Sleeping four-year-old amongst casualties in Syria during 'bloody week' of bombing

• 'I have no friends here': Idlib's children suffering in camps where 'death has become the norm'

• Idlib towns and families destroyed as Syrian forces move northward

Here is their story, in the city of Idlib which is the last significant stronghold of rebel fighters - with shocking pictures, filmed especially for ITV News.

Blooded and dust-caked children screaming in pain and fear after having been bombed in their own home.

This is the reality of life in Idlib now.

The assault from Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's forces have already driven out nearly seven hundred thousand people since December - now another half a million could follow.

As a result, the reality of life here is so often death.

Activist Abdulkafi Alhamdo uses Facebook to share updates from Idlib. He describes himself as "a father, a teacher and an activist" and spoke to ITV News regularly in 2016 during the siege of Aleppo.

Abdulkafi says those living in Idlib are enduring "severe conditions" living in conditions "four or five degrees below zero".

One family of four, heating anything they can find to stay warm in the cold weather, "suffocated to death" according to Abdulkafi.

He says "Four million people are in danger of extermination".

A victim of another attack, a young baby girl - with her injuries so grave that those who recovered this tiny soul debated that her body was so mutilated that she could not be given back to her father.

Somehow some children do survive the bombs and are often ran to the ambulance fighting for their life.

• ITV News International Affairs Editor Rageh Omaar explains how this war is 'one of the worst in all of the nine years in Syria'

The bunches in her hair tell of a day that started with some sort of a normality.

These broken buildings have taken so many young lives and robbed others of those who gave them life.

The parents of many do not know if their children are dead or alive as they're buried beneath the rubble.

Idlib is set to become the biggest humanitarian crisis of the war, eclipsing even the horrors of what has gone before.

Idlib's hospital's are packed with those who are paying for this war and given what they have suffered and what remains of their lives, the tragedy is for the living, not just the dead.