President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has hosted the seven-year-old Syrian girl Bana Alabed and her family on Wednesday at the Presidential Palace in Ankara. Alabed became the voice of children and adults trapped in Syria's Aleppo, where constant airstrikes and shelling by forces loyal to Bashar Assad claimed lives and left thousands on the brink of death.The young girl, her mother Fatemah, father Ghassan and her siblings accompanied President Erdoğan and First Lady Emine Erdoğan in a photo shoot at the Presidential Palace. Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu also attended the meeting between the Alabed family and the president.

Reporting on a conversation that took place at the meeting, the state-run Anadolu Agency said Bana extended Erdoğan the "greetings of Aleppo children."

"We love you very much. You got us out of Aleppo. We suffered there. They bombed our house. We were left without food. Thank you," Bana said to Erdoğan.Bana told the president she had been scared to go out in Aleppo because of "bombs falling every day."

Erdoğan went on to gift toys to Bana and her siblings during the meeting.

Through a Twitter account run by her mother, Alabed put a human face on the drama of thousands of civilians indiscriminately targeted by the Assad forces and Iran-backed militia in the five-year civil war in Syria, Turkeytarget="_blank"'>