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Seven-year-old Syrian Twitter star safely evacuated from Aleppo

Bana Alabed was one of at least 2,700 children allowed to leave the besieged city over the weekend.

Katie Collins Senior European Correspondent
Katie a UK-based news reporter and features writer. Officially, she is CNET's European correspondent, covering tech policy and Big Tech in the EU and UK. Unofficially, she serves as CNET's Taylor Swift correspondent. You can also find her writing about tech for good, ethics and human rights, the climate crisis, robots, travel and digital culture. She was once described a "living synth" by London's Evening Standard for having a microchip injected into her hand.
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A convoy of buses carrying civilians leaves bombed-out Aleppo.

 Getty Images

A seven-year-old Syrian girl who has 326,000 Twitter followers has been safely evacuated from the city of Aleppo, the Syrian American Medical Society confirmed on Monday.

Bana Alabed and her family are among many Syrian civilians, including at least 2,700 children, who were allowed to leave rebel-held zones in northern Syria over the weekend.

Alabed, who was pictured in a tweet posted by SAMS president Ahmad Tarakji, attracted worldwide attention by tweeting about her life in war-torn Aleppo, including the story of her house being destroyed. Syria's president, Bashar al-Assad, refused to acknowledge that the tweets were genuine, telling journalists in October that Bana's Twitter presence was promoted by "terrorists or their supporters."

Last week in series of tweets, Bana and her mother reached out to First Lady Michelle Obama in a video pleading for help and expressed their fear that they might be captured or killed imminently. The family is now safe.

Evacuations from Aleppo began Thursday but broke down a day later when convoys of fleeing civilians came under fire, then resumed Sunday. Alabed's mother, Fatemah, told reporters the family had been held "like hostages" for 24 hours on buses without food or water before leaving the city Sunday night, according to the BBC.