Mohammed Qataa's mother wanders the streets of Aleppo looking into strangers' faces as she tries to find her son's killers, a BBC reporter described in his visit to Aleppo.
She knows she would recognize them. She was looking right at them when, in front of a dumbstruck and terrified crowd, Mohammed was shot dead, accused of blasphemy.
She remembers Mohammed as a happy, dutiful son, well known and well-liked in the Shaar neighborhood where the men of the family scrape a living with a coffee cart.
He was 14 years old, but with no schooling possible because of the war he was usually to be found on the busy main thoroughfare through Shaar, selling the thick, sweet coffee they prefer here.
One day last month, someone asked him for a free cup. "Not even if the Prophet himself returns," he had replied, laughing. That remark was a death sentence.
Mohammed Qataa, 14, was condemned for a joke he made when asked for a free cup of coffee
It was overheard by three armed men. They dragged him to a car and took him away. Half-an-hour later, a badly beaten Mohammed was dumped back in the road by his cart.
The men, showing no fear that anyone would question what they were doing, summoned a crowd with shouts of "Oh People of Aleppo. Oh people of Shaar." Their bellows alerted Mohammed's mother.
Recalling what happened next, she buries her face in her hands and weeps.
"One of them shouted: 'Whoever insults the Prophet will be killed according to Sharia'," she told the reporter.
"I ran down barefoot to the streets. I heard the first shot. I fell to the ground when I got there.
"One of them shot him again and kicked him. He shot him for a third time and stamped on him.
"I said: 'Why are you killing him? He's still a child!' The man shouted: 'He is not a Muslim - leave!'"
Foreign support
The conflict in Syria started in March 2011, when pro-reform protests turned into a massive insurgency following the intervention of Western and regional states.
The unrest, which took in terrorist groups from across Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, has transpired as one of the bloodiest conflicts in recent history.
As the foreign-backed insurgency in Syria continues without an end in sight, the US government and its allies have boosted their political and military support to Takfiri extremists.
According to a report by the Financial Times, Qatar has already spent billions of dollars to fund militants in Syria in the past two years and Saudi Arabia leads the countries providing arms to them.
Ahmad Jarba, who was elected as the head of the so-called Syrian National Coalition said on Sunday that he was expecting "advanced weapons" to reach.
On June 28 The Wall Street Journal reported that the CIA is stockpiling weapons shipped in Jordan to prepare militants for a concerted onslaught against the Syrian government in August.
Another report by the Los Angeles Times said, since opening of a new US base in a desert in southwest of Jordan in November 2012, the CIA operatives and US special operations troops have covertly trained the militants in groups of 20 to 45 at a time in two-week courses.
Beside military aids to the insurgents, administration of US president Barack Obama has adopted a controversial stance toward attempts for starting negotiations between the two sides, by calling for pouring more arms to the battleground so that the militants, mixed with extremist and terrorist groups, gain an upper hand before any talks.
In a conference of the so-called ‘Friends of Syria’ US Secretary of State John Kerry said rebels needed more support "for the purpose of being able to get to Geneva and to be able to address the imbalance on the ground.”
Washington has remained indifferent about warnings by Russia and other world powers about the consequences of arming militant groups.
SHI/BA