Harry Potter author JK Rowling retweeted a distressing message from Bana al-Abed, a seven-year-old girl on the bombing of their home in Aleppo. "I have not medicine, no home, no clean water. This will make me die even before a bomb kill me," al-Abed tweeted from an account set up by her mother Fatemah.

In the video, sent directly to Rowling, al-Abed said, "I am on the run. Now I fear being killed. Please save us."

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Rowling had previously sent al-Abed digital copies of the Harry Potter series, according to the account. The young girl thanked the author with a picture of herself holding up a thank-you sign.

Rowling has tweeted her support for those affected by the humanitarian crisis in Syria's besieged city of Aleppo in a series of posts together with the hashtag #standwithaleppo.

On Sunday (27 November), the seven-year-old said that she had "almost died" after her home was destroyed by bombing, together with a picture of herself covered in dust. Al-abed reported that she had a "minor injury" and was hungry.

The young girl was dismissed as "not a credible source" by Bashar al-Assad. The Syrian president told Danish TV2 correspondent Rasmus Tantholdt that Alabed's tweets about living in Aleppo were promoted by "terrorists or their supporters".

Replying to the president, al-Abed tweeted: "Sir Assad, I'm not a terrorist, I just want to live and no bombing please."

In an interview with ITV News, she asked the world to "listen to us", saying "we are children, we have a right to live".

She added: "Children are dying here, in their schools and homes. Even in hospitals there aren't any medicines for children and the injured."

Al-Abed's family said they had received death threats over the social media account, which now has 198,000 followers, in tweets dated 30 November.

President Assad has also accused the White Helmets of being a "facelift of al-Nusra in Aleppo... They [Omran Daqneesh] were rescued twice, each one in a different incident, and just as part of the publicity of those White Helmets. None of these incidents were true. You can have it manipulated, and it is manipulated," he said in an interview with Swiss TV channel SRF 1 TV.

The White Helmets, a volunteer rescue service in Aleppo have won this year's Right Livelihood Award, known as the 'alternative Nobel Prize'. The group are credited with saving 60,000 lives in the Syrian conflict and have nearly 3,000 volunteers.

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