Syrian man walks into his own funeral

Mr Rayhan’s family believed after he failed to come home from the market that he was among that number, and began mourning him that day.

Also Thursday, an worldwide human rights group called on the UN Security Council to impose an arms embargo on the Syrian government following airstrikes on a rebel-held suburb that killed more than 100 people.

But on the third day, which was this Tuesday, Mr Rayhan stumbled back home in a daze with dust caked in his hair and beard.

But rescue teams kept on searching and managed to pull Mr Rayhan out from beneath the rubble where he had had no food or water for three days.

His story was reported by the Eastern Ghouta branch of the Local Coordination Committees of Syria, a network of opposition activists.

“At least 20 civilians were killed in the heavy shelling and air attacks since this morning on Douma”, said Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

‘It often happens with children – I have heard of three-year-old children who have been mourned by their families and then found alive in rubble’.

Many of those killed in the August 16 attacks that targeted Douma’s popular markets and residential areas were civilians.

After four rockets were fired into Israel from Syria, the Israeli government launched airstrikes and artillery attacks against 14 targets in the Syrian Golan Heights.

The Syrian civil war, now in its fifth year, has resulted in the deaths of at least 250,000 people and made the country the world’s single-largest source of refugees and displaced people, according to the UN.