This video shows the kind of heroism that happens almost every day as Assad bombs Syrian civilians

Bassam Khabieh/Reuters

A man carries a baby who survived what activists say was an airstrike by forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the Duma neighbourhood of Damascus January 7, 2014.

More than 300,000 civilians have been killed since the Syrian civil war broke out in 2011, at least 19,000 of them from the Assad regime's bombing raids on rebel-held areas. 

Assad and his forces use barrel bombs - steel barrels packed with explosives and shrapnel - to terrorize the population, often killing as many as 100 people at a time.

The military is known to target neighborhoods where civilians congregate, such as hospitals, bakeries, schools, and playgrounds.

As a result, "everyday decisions-whether to go visit a neighbor, to send your child to school, to step out to buy bread- have become, potentially, decisions about life and death," Frederic Hof, a former State Department policy planner on Syria under the current White House who is now a Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council, wrote in an analysis of the war's casualties.

The video below shows men trying to rescue children from a crumbling building in the aftermath of an airstrike - and demonstrates the kind of heroism that has become commonplace in a country that has been ravaged by war for nearly five years: