Unprecedented levels of internal displacement took place in Syria this year, a UN commission said Wednesday.

In a 24-page report, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria highlighted the deteriorating human rights situation in Syria from January to June.

“In under six months, as pro-Government forces moved to recapture large swathes of territory from armed groups and terrorist organizations, over one million Syrian men, women, and children were displaced with most now living in dire conditions,” said the report.

“Intense fighting took place in Aleppo, northern Homs, Damascus, Rif Damascus, Dara, and Idlib governorates,” the report said, noting that actors on the ground failed to take any action to protect civilians.

“It is completely inexcusable that no party to this conflict adhered to their obligations toward civilians displaced by their military operations,” said Commission Chair Paulo Pinheiro.

The report added: “Most battles were marked by war crimes including indiscriminate attacks, deliberately attacking protected objects, using prohibited weapons, pillaging and/or forced displacement, including by armed groups.”

“Displaced Syrians face myriad hardships and challenges to their livelihoods, including the lack of access to sufficient food, water, medical services, basic sanitation facilities, and adequate accommodation,” it added.

The report prepared by the three-member commission further warned against a similar scenario in Idlib “if efforts to reach a negotiated settlement fail”.

The report will be presented at the 39th session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva on Sept. 17, according to the commission.

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At least 134 people, mostly children, died in violence over this past weekend in Idlib, Hama, Aleppo in Syria, the UN reported Monday.

UN Secretary General spokesman Farhan Haq said the country reported a “heavy civilian toll” from the conflicts.

He said at least 59 people lost their lives in an explosion Sunday in an ammunition depot of a residential building in Idlib.

The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) reported 28 children were also killed in Idlib and Western Aleppo. Three UNICEF-funded health centers are providing assistance to children and women who were targeted in the attacks, according to Haq.

He called on all sides not to target schools and hospitals and to allow safe, sustainable, and unhindered humanitarian access to the region in accordance with international law.

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Video footage of an eight year-old Syrian refugee in Idlib using metal cans in place of prosthetic legs has drawn attention to the plight of displaced people in Syria.

Maya Mohammad Al-Mar’i has been forced to use empty tin cans to help her walk after her father could not afford prosthetic limbs. The family were forced to flee from Aleppo after the bombardment of the city by the Syrian regime.

Maya’s father was also born without his lower limbs, making it hard to find work in the refugee camps in rural Idlib.

Local activists and humanitarian workers who raised awareness of Maya’s story have since launched a social media call to raise funds to provide medical prosthetics and help the family.

Activists said the situation of the Al-Mar’i was similar to thousands of other Syrians internally displaced, who suffer from abject poverty in rural camps, as well as the trauma of war.

UNICEF revealed in March that more than 1.5 million Syrians have been left permanently disabled by injuries received as a result of the conflict, including at least 86,000 people who have lost limbs. The vast majorities of injuries have been perpetrated by the Syrian regime, which regularly heavily bombards residential areas, hospitals and schools, held by the opposition.

The conflict in Syria, now entering its eighth year, has displaced over half the pre-war population; 6.1 million people are internally displaced, over five million are refugees in neighbouring countries, and over one million have fled to Europe.

Source – MEMO

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The 13th convoy carrying civilians and opposition fighters from Syria’s besieged suburb of Eastern Ghouta arrived in the western suburbs of Aleppo and Idlib provinces on Monday.

The evacuees were taken from the towns of Arbin, Zamalka, and Ain Tarma. Monday’s convoy was made of 28 buses carrying over 1,000 passengers, including injured people, patients, women and children.

Separately, in Douma, one of the biggest districts in Eastern Ghouta, 89 injured and sick people were also evacuated.

At least 46,000 people have been evacuated from Eastern Ghouta since the evacuation process began on 22 March.

Evacuees are being accommodated at temporary refugee centers, and at local schools and mosques, in Syria’s north-western Idlib and Aleppo provinces.

The evacuations are part of a Russian-brokered agreement between Syria’s Assad regime and armed opposition groups.

On 24 February, the UN Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 2401, which called for a cease-fire in Syria — especially in Eastern Ghouta — to allow the delivery of humanitarian aid.

Despite the resolution, however, the regime and its allies launched a major ground offensive early in March aimed at capturing opposition-held parts of the district.

Since 19 February, more than 1,400 people have been killed in attacks by the regime and its allies in Eastern Ghouta, according to local civil-defense sources.

Home to some 400,000 residents, the district has remained under a crippling siege for the last five years which has prevented the delivery of badly needed humanitarian supplies.

Syria has been locked in a devastating conflict since early 2011 when the regime cracked down on demonstrators with unexpected ferocity.

According to UN officials, hundreds of thousands of people have been killed in the conflict to date.

Source – MEMO

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At least 38 more civilians were killed by Bashar al-Assad regime forces in besieged Eastern Ghouta region on Sunday, Syrian Civil Defense sources said.

The regime’s ground and air attacks continued on civilians in the opposition-held area near capital Damascus despite decisions to implement a ceasefire made separately by Russia and the UN Security Council.

The sources from the Syrian Civil Defense, also known as the White Helmets, said 31 civilians were killed in Duma district in airstrikes and missile attacks.

Seven people were also killed when Assad regime forces attacked a residential area between Misraba and Duma districts with rocket and mortar shells.

Late Saturday, regime forces and its supporters have advanced into the opposition-held areas, capturing the town of al-Nashabiya, and the villages of Otaya, Hazrama.

The death toll in the region may rise as the attacks are still ongoing. The number of casualties in Eastern Ghouta since Feb. 19 has reached 756.

Last Saturday, the UN Security Council adopted a resolution calling for a 30-day ceasefire in Syria without delay.
In an unusually lengthy statement, the U.S. strongly condemned the regime and its primary international supporter: Russia for violating the ceasefire, saying Moscow “has gone on to ignore its terms and to kill innocent civilians under the false auspices of counter-terrorism operations”.

“This is the same combination of lies and indiscriminate force that Russia and the Syrian regime used to isolate and destroy Aleppo in 2016, where thousands of civilians were killed,” White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said.

Russian military aircraft conducted some 20 daily sorties on Damascus and Eastern Ghouta between Feb. 24-28 from the Russian-operated Humaymim Airfield to the northwest, the White House said.

“The Assad regime, along with its backers in Moscow and Tehran, should adhere to UNSCR 2401, cease hostilities in and around Eastern Ghouta, and allow unfettered delivery of humanitarian aid to the nearly 400,000 innocent civilians in critical need,” Sanders added.

Eastern Ghouta, a Damascus suburb, has been under siege for the last five years and humanitarian access to the area, which is home to some 400,000 people, has been completely cut off.

In the past eight months, forces of the Assad regime have intensified their siege of Eastern Ghouta, making it nearly impossible for food or medicine to get into the district and leaving thousands of patients in need of treatment.

Source – Anadolu Agency

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Russian air strikes on the northwestern Syrian province of Idlib have killed at least 33 people since yesterday, including a pregnant woman and her unborn child, according to Reuters.

Most of the dead were in Saraqib, a town on the main highway linking to the government-held city of Aleppo and 20 kilometres northwest of the Abu Al-Duhur Military Airbase, which government forces and allied militias captured from insurgents.

Mustafa Al-Haj Youssef, head of the Idlib civil defence known as the White Helmets, said more than 35 people had been wounded in the airstrikes, one of which reportedly struck a vegetable market at six o’clock this morning, north of Saraqib.

“Directly after [the first attack], the hospital where the wounded were transferred was targeted, causing injuries among the medical staff, and the hospital went fully out of service,” he told reporters over the phone.

In a video released by the White Helmets showing the aftermath of one of yesterday’s attacks, medics can be seen pulling people out from the rubble of destroyed buildings and transferring the wounded to hospital.

Idlib and its surrounding areas have been under the control of opposition groups since 2015, forming a strategic stronghold for numerous factions. Despite being a designated de-escalation zone as per the Astana agreement between Russia, Iran and Turkey, the region faces regular shelling and has been subject to an intensified assault by regime forces in recent months.

Earlier this month, the UN Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide and the UN Special Adviser on the Responsibility to Protect, expressed concerns about the situation in Idlib, calling on its de-escalation status to be respected.

They estimated that escalated fighting in southern Idlib and northern rural Hama, between regime forces and opposition groups, have caused the additional displacement of over 200,000 people, many of whom had fled to the north of the country from other regions of Syria.

Numerous NGOs, including Amnesty International, have recorded the systematic targeting of hospitals by Russia and the Syrian regime, which amounts to war crimes.

Source – MEMO

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At least 43 civilians have been killed and dozens more wounded in three air raids on a busy market in al-Atarib, a town in Syria’s western Aleppo province.

Al Jazeera Suhaib al-Khalaf, reporting from Idlib city, Syria, said the overall toll was expected to rise because dozens of people had been wounded or were still missing after the attack.

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said it was not immediately clear whether Monday’s attacks on al-Atarib, a town in a so-called de-escalation zone, had been carried out by Syrian or Russian warplanes.

Videos posted on social media purported to show massive destruction at the scene with rubble from damaged buildings covering the town’s street and people’s faces drenched in blood.

The air raids come less than two weeks after peace talks in Astana where Russia, Turkey and Iran announced plans to implement no-fly zones over four so-called de-escalation zones.

The zones, which include the provinces of Idlib, Homs, Latakia, Aleppo and Hama – are areas where fighters and government forces should halt hostilities, including air raids, for six months.

More than 2.5 million people are believed to live in the zones.

The agreement, however, excludes the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) group and Hay’et Tahrir al-Sham.

Idlib is mainly controlled by Hay’et Tahrir al-Sham, an alliance of anti-government groups formed in January and linked to al-Qaeda.

Syria’s conflict evolved from a government crackdown on protests in 2011 to a devastating war that has drawn in world powers, including Russia and a US-led international coalition.

Since then, hundreds of thousands of people have been killed and more than 10 million displaced, according to the UN.

Source – Al jazeera

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‘Syrian army is targeting us with air strikes’

The Syrian province of Aleppo is again under heavy bombardment by government warplanes targeting rebel fighters.

The air raids have forced thousands of civilians to flee the area and set up makeshift camps in the countryside.

Millions of Syrians have lost their homes during the country’s six-year war, which has seen the Syrian government, backed by Russia and Iran, trying to quell uprisings by opposition groups.

‘Amnesty report warns of crime against humanity in Syria’
Amnesty International says the Syrian government’s ‘surrender or starve’ campaign targeting civilians constitutes a crime against humanity.

It’s calling for an end to what it calls ‘the dark stain on the world’s conscience’.

A new report says government forces surrounded and bombed densely-populated, opposition-controlled areas.

Thousands of people were given an ultimatum to abandon their homes or die. Amnesty is asking for an independent body to investigate and prosecute those responsible.

Source – Al Jazeera

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Born into a Circassian-Syrian family, Natay Abdullah hails from Aleppo, a city that has been ravaged by conflict since the start of Syria’s civil war in 2011. Abdullah, a 29-year-old graphic designer, found himself unemployed in 2012 and spent several months working for local humanitarian aid initiatives before moving to Turkey in 2013 for a job opportunity. This year, Abdullah paid a visit to Aleppo, where his family remains. After making his way through checkpoints and bearing witness to the city’s destruction, Abdullah told Al Jazeera why he could no longer call Aleppo home.

When I arrived in our neighbourhood in Aleppo, four years after having crossed the border into Turkey, I jokingly called out to my mum as I used to before: “Mama, do you need anything from the grocery store?”
She was lost for words. She could not believe I was back home.

I had not told my family that I was returning to see them. They would have been worried sick throughout the entire trip. I immediately headed towards my parents’ place, and upon entering their building, a lot of memories came flooding back.

Looking at the stairs, I was noting all the small details: “This broken step is still there … Ah look, here is another broken step.” Then, I stood outside our front door, and I saw them: My sisters and my niece were standing there by chance. I kissed them all, and we started talking; we were very emotional. My father was out, but suddenly the doorbell rang, and I opened the door. He was also lost for words when he saw me.

It was really nice to see them again, especially my little niece. She was five years old the last time I saw her, and now she is nine. She developed her own character and told me about the boy she likes at school.

Before leaving Syria, we used to share a tradition. Every Saturday, we would go to the park, just me and her – no mum, no granny. When she would say something like, “I want to take off my shoes!” I would respond with, “Okay, I’ll also take off my shoes”. While in Turkey, I made sure to keep in touch with her. I used to send her some drawings, and sometimes we would converse through her mum’s WhatsApp.

Our neighbourhood, called al-Sabeel, in Aleppo was luckily unaffected by the bombing. It was with my friend, Rami, that I went to see the other parts of the city, especially the old city. I was shocked. The amount of destruction is unbelievable. I could not recognise where I was.

We went to al-Jdeide, Bab al-Hadid, and Sabaa Bahrat neighbourhoods, where we used to hang out with all our friends. I wanted to see all the places that have sentimental value, but devastation was all I found. How will they rebuild such a city with corruption in the Syrian government so prominent nowadays? For the most part, during our visit to the old city, we tried to figure out exactly where we were until we had to ask around to remember parts of the area.

My friend, Rami, stayed in Aleppo throughout the war. He was the unfortunate one out of all of our friends. We all travelled abroad – to Germany, Austria, Turkey, Armenia and Lebanon, but he was the only one who could not make it.

I was afraid of seeing him again. He is a good friend of mine, and I love him. I was afraid to see him completely broken, as had happened to another friend from Aleppo who arrived in Turkey last year. I was afraid that we might not have been able to connect any more. But Rami had found work with children in a primary school nearby, and this kept him alive. He was often depressed and contemplated suicide, but by working with children, he began to live again. For hours, we sat and talked.

I was always thinking this could be my last trip to Syria. I know that there is no fighting any more in Aleppo. Government forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad control the national road from the capital, Damascus, to Aleppo. This made me think it was a good chance to return home.

But I also felt this could be the last time. What would I do if I return? There is nothing to do. How will I survive and support my family? I was completely unfamiliar with the prices. To buy an espresso in the street, you need 250 Syrian lira ($1.22); for electricity, you need to pay for the generator for 10 or 12 hours of power a day.

My sister’s house was on the front line; she could go back there, but they have no money to fix it, as is the case with most families in Aleppo. Many want to go back to their properties, but sometimes, in the face of police officers at checkpoints, this is suicide. If, through your name, the police discover that you have a connection to opposition fighters, you will not be able to pass and risk being arrested, or worse.

The road from Beirut to Aleppo by bus via Homs takes about 10 hours. At the Syrian-Lebanese border, soldiers asked me for money, and I had to give them 5,000 lira ($25). Before the conflict, they used to ask for bribes, threatening to cause problems or inventing any excuse to take our money. Now, without any excuse, they just ask you for the amount they want.

Every checkpoint, men have to step out of their vehicles and pay up to guarantee a smooth entry. When you arrive in Aleppo, you see Russian soldiers strolling the neighbourhoods all the time. I heard stories of them getting drunk and shooting in the air just for fun, so this was something new for me to see.

My name, Natay, means the eye of the little horse, which is a Circassian name, but even in the Circassian community, it is not so common. Circassians in Aleppo are a small minority. When I was a child, I had an identity problem: I grew up with my mother, who is the perfect traditional Circassian woman, but I still went to school during former President Hafez al-Assad’s reign, where there used to be one state and one message. It was confusing for me: Arabic at school, Circassian at home, while all of our family’s friends were Armenians or Christians.

Today, at 29 years old, I don’t think I will ever again live in my city, Aleppo. I started to revive my life in Turkey, and I don’t feel I would be able to do it again in Syria. It would never be the same.

Source – Al Jazeera

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Omar had been imprisoned for 14 months when he learned to walk. Om Omar recalls how she used to block the infants ears so he wouldn’t hear the screams.

His mother can’t recall the exact date; all she knows is that they were in the Adra jail outside Damascus.

“I didn’t recognise whether it was day or night,” she says. “We weren’t allowed to leave, for the bathroom or for a shower.”

There wasn’t much legroom in the dark and airless room that she and her son shared with their fellow prisoners.
“I would stand up and create some space so I could teach him how to walk, playing with him,” says Om Omar from her new home in the countryside of Idlib.

She does not reveal her true identity for fear of her life and asks to be referred to as “Om Omar” – which translates into English as “mother of Omar”.

“I was on one side and another girl named Marwa was in front of me, about one-and-a-half metres away. I would walk with him, using my hands, towards her. Then we would swap over.”

When Omar fell, his mother would catch him. Slowly but surely, with uncertain steps to begin with, he found the confidence to walk.

“He was strong,” she says. “He was the only baby there. It made the other prisoners happy to look at him. It was one happy time amid the darkness of this prison and its cruel guards.”

Omar spent the early years of his life in a Syrian jail while his mother was tortured. This is their story.

‘It wasn’t the life I expected’
When she was younger Om Omar, now 38 and originally from Deir ez-Zor in eastern Syria, would imagine what life might hold for her.

“Like every woman in the world, I would dream of having babies,” she recalls, “of raising my family in a good decent house like every family in the world.

“When I was teenager, I was so obsessed with babies, taking care of our neighbours’ babies and friends’ when they used to visit my mother. I dreamt I would have at least one, and I did. But unfortunately it wasn’t the life I expected.”

Om Omar and her husband Khalid, also from Deir ez-Zor, married in 2006 and moved to Aleppo before the war, where he was employed in a fabric manufacturing business by his uncle.

When conflict broke out, the city, the country’s second largest, rapidly became a focus for protests against the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

Khalid lived in the rebel-held eastern neighbourhoods: He joined the Free Syrian Army but was killed by mortar fire during a battle against government forces in August 2013. He was 44 and had been married to Om Omar for seven years.

Omar was born in March 2014 in Eza’a in western Aleppo. Father and son never met.

Om Omar was widowed, alone and had no contact with her family, who disapproved of the couple’s activism against the government. She had already been detained in 2011 and 2013 for her opposition, the second time for three days.
“I didn’t bother trying to talk to them or convince them,” she says. “I continued with my activism.”

Her life now, Om Omar says, is like that of a single woman. But while she grieved for the loss of her husband, she also worries for the future of herself and her son.

Even before Khalid’s death, Om Omar feared arrest by the government. For almost two years, she had moved much-needed medicine to eastern Aleppo through Bustan al-Qasr, a rebel district and home to opposition groups.

The neighbourhood, which was a frequent haunt for snipers, provided a corridor between the divided cities before it became a no-go zone after clashes in 2014.

Om Omar knew that her activism carried a high risk – but still regarded it as her duty. “I was reckless, yes. But I had to do it and don’t regret it. I had a priority, which was the sick people who needed the medicine.”

She thought those hopes of her younger years would never come true. “This was my life after giving birth and Khalid’s death,” she says. “I was struggling to breastfeed my baby because of the intensity and pressure I was living under at that time.”

And then, in September 2014, Om Omar’s life took another turn for the worse.

One night, five men from a government intelligence agency burst into her home while she and Omar were asleep. She believes they were betrayed by a neighbour.

The men broke the crockery and chairs and overturned family possessions.

They searched the house, swore at Om Omar and took away packets of medicine.

They accused her of helping injured terrorists with medical supplies.

Om Omar denied the allegations and refused to provide the names of her social circle, lest they also fall under suspicion and face arrest. When she began to scream, the men put guns to her head. “The raid was the straw that broke the camel’s back,” she recalls.

She and Omar were then taken to the agency HQ in Damascus, more than 200 miles away where, Om Omar says, “the horror began”.

Om Omar was blindfolded when she first entered the state’s prison system – but she could already detect the “stinky, dirty smell” that would permeate her life during the coming years.

“I felt shocked,” she says. “I was shaking with my crying baby, wondering what my or his destiny would be.”

There was no ventilation: instead prisoners resorted to digging holes through the walls to try and let in air
Mother and son were to spend nearly a month there, then shuttled between other prisons across the capital, including that at Al-fiha’a. “They took the baby from me on the first night, to put pressure on me, and then they gave him back after the first interrogation.”

Omar was two months old at the time.

“When I entered, there was water on the ground that smelled terrible,” she says. “The walls were full of words, the names of previous prisoners who used be in the same room. It was like an abandoned basement that had not been fixed for ages. I could barely walk because I felt dizzy. I had not slept and it was night.”

The room was crammed with other women. There was no ventilation: Instead, prisoners resorted to digging holes through the walls to try and let in air. Throughout her first night, Om Omar could hear the sounds of men and women screaming.

Tell me everything – or you will never see your baby
For her first interrogation Om Omar was led into a room. Her hands were bound. Her eyes were blindfolded. She was hit with every step she took.

The interrogator asked her about her family, about her husband, about her work. She was accused of taking medical supplies to help the Free Syrian Army.

When Om Omar started to answer, her interrogator hit her on the head. “Stop lying and tell me the truth about your work and husband!” she recalls him shouting.

“In the beginning I was utterly terrified because of the torture and beating,” Om Omar says. “I was afraid of being raped, or killed.”

And then there was the threat to Omar. Human rights groups have documented how the Assad government has tortured and killed children to punish, or extract information from, their families.

“My child had nothing to do with jails or anything else,” says Om Omar. “But the Syrian Regime interrogation is criminal enough to kill and imprison children or babies. My son was always on my mind. Who’s going to take care of him? Are they willing to kill him too? Or beat him in front of me?”

In the days after her first interrogation, Om Omar was left in an overcrowded room. Omar cried all the time. The guards paid no attention to her appeals for food or baby supplies. Eventually she had to improvise diapers by ripping up pieces of old clothing.

Soon the torture sessions became a regular part of prison life. “When I came back after every interrogation, I held my son and cried,” Om Omar says. “So did he.”

Prisoners call this method ‘hanging’, according to a report, inflicting ‘awful pain, ligament rupture and semi-permanent paralysis in the hands’

Om Omar also had to face torture sessions at night, the first after she had been detained for a week. She recalls how she handed Omar to one of the friends she had made in prison before she was dragged to a large room and faced, as she puts it, by a “fat middle-age man, with a big stick in his hand. He started to come close to me, and said: ‘Tell me everything or you will never return to see your baby tonight.’ I said nothing. I was shocked.”

The man screamed at Om Omar to confess, then beat her to the ground. She was covered in blood and already barely able to stand. Later he returned with an accomplice and a rope, which he hung from the ceiling. Om Omar was then suspended by her bound hands, her feet only just touching the ground.

What she describes is a common and well-documented form of torture practised by the Assad regime. Prisoners call this method “shabeh” (hanging), according to a report released by the Violations Documentation Centre in Syria in September 2013, which inflicts “awful pain, ligament rupture and semi-permanent paralysis in the hands”.

Om Omar was left strung up for hours. Then, more questions. Still, she said nothing. “I knew that if I said anything then they would keep on torturing me and increase the level and the brutality of the torture.”

This treatment continued for almost two months. She recalls fellow detainees being repeatedly raped and tortured, dying from hanging or lack of medical treatment.

At one point Om Omar was moved to the notorious Branch 215 where, the VDC reported, up to 70 prisoners would be crammed into a cell four metres by four metres. Consistent testimony from survivors describes how prisoners were starved or thrown onto the floor “swimming in a pool of blood and pus that oozes out of their bodies due to the lack of sanitisers and hygienic conditions”.

In December 2015, Human Rights Watch reported that at least 3,532 detainees had died at the centre, based on evidence smuggled out of Syria, although the group regards this figure as an underestimate.

To many Syrians, the centre is simply known as “the Branch of Death”.

Explaining the world to someone who has never seen it
In December 2014, Om Omar and Omar were taken to Adra prison, where they were to spend the rest of their imprisonment.

About a year after they were first arrested, Om Omar started telling Omar about the outside world, “about real life, about parks, school and so on”.

Omar began to form words when he was nearly 18 months old and his mother was teaching him parts of the Quran. “His first word was ‘mommy’, which he said very roughly,” she recalls. Teaching her son the word “daddy” caused great sadness – but Om Omar wanted Omar to remember that he had a father.

The toddler’s progress had a positive effect on the other prisoners. “The atmosphere in the jail room was happy, despite the desperate conditions we were all living under,” Om Omar says. “Everyone gave Omar a kiss, but then the guards heard that it was getting noisy and started to hit the metal door quite hard, which made Omar cry.

“They didn’t supply me with milk or any other items that I needed for my newborn baby. His size and weight were low because of the lack of food when he was meant to be growing.

“Once he got an infection because of the hot weather in the prison. It was so incredibly bad, he couldn’t sleep, or calm down, until the prisoners came and took me to the prison doctor and gave him medicine.” Still Omar did not get better. Eventually some friends “had some leaves which we put in water and after half an hour he fell into a deep sleep”.

Prison was Omar’s home. Sometimes he might toy with a blanket – but it was a world where he was too young to make friends.

“That broke my heart,” his mother says, “because I looked back at when I was pregnant with him and the life I dreamt of him having in the future. Of buying his small bed and toys and everything any mother dreams of getting for her baby.

“It’s heart-breaking. It made me cry many times at night, thinking of a bright future with his dad, who is dead already.”

Om Omar would sing to lull her son to sleep or else “start to tell him short stories about the Prophet Muhammad and his fellowship, trying to reassure him”.

But sometimes Omar could not sleep because the weather was too hot or too cold – or because of the sounds of torture from the prison yard.

“I was covering his ears to prevent these voices from entering his head,” Om Omar says. “I couldn’t do it in the end; he was crying so intensely when he heard these voices.”

For support, Om Omar clung to her faith and the struggles of the prophet as well as the love of her son and encouragement from fellow prisoners.

“Many times I burst into tears out of pressure and desperation. I thought I would die here and never get out to live a normal life and in a house. They were the worst days of my life.

“I took an oath that I wouldn’t give up, because of Omar, so long as he’s with me… for him and his beloved dead father, who left me a piece of him. I’ll be taking care of him for the rest of my life.”

How Omar was reborn
And then Om Omar and Omar were free. On 8 February 2017, the government cut a deal with opposition forces that resulted in the release of 50 women from government prisons. As part of the agreement, Om Omar had to pay a judge just under $6,000.

Her relief was uncontainable, she recalls, as she told Omar that they would return home and see the sun, people, children. “I cried a lot,” she says. “It was unbelievable, the reaction on his face. He was crying and happy.”

Om Omar now lives with a friend in the countryside in Idlib and is in contact again with her sister, with whom she lost touch while she was imprisoned. She also has space to reflect on what her years in detention did to her and her son, who is comprehending the outside world for the first time.

“One time he asked ‘Are we in heaven, Mum?’ because he saw birds and cats and wanted to know,” she says. “You can imagine how surprised he was when he was realised it was the actual world.”

Omar, who now sports short brown hair, lives at a rehabilitation centre with other children in an attempt to reintegrate him back into society. His mother visits her son as much as she can.

Ahmad Khaldon, assistant manager at the facility, said that Om Omar’s case is not that unusual amid a conflict that has left more than 470,000 people dead, according to the Syrian Centre for Policy Research.

“They have been through similar circumstances, of struggling from the aftermath of the war and its physiological effects and losing their childhood,” he says. “We try to give them the proper atmosphere of bringing up a family, which they miss back in their home.”

At first Omar had problems interacting with other children, including fighting, but is now more relaxed and playing and eating. Om Omar says: “It’s like he’s born again, seeing everything new and adapting to aspects of his new life. He has flashbacks about what and how it was like in the prison, but he’s got better recently.”

He is forming new memories of things he had never seen before, of animals, buildings, cars and food.

“I hope he gets rid of all the bad influences from the first three years of his life and starts a new page with no bombing or death or fighting, just craving a normal, decent life where he can have what he wants.”

Will Om Omar tell Omar the full story of those years spent in prison?
“I will tell him what happened,” his mother says. “I won’t lie to him ever. He will know from the internet what has happened to his country, his land, his dad and how death and devastation were brought to his land.

“The media tells people everything, so I would rather tell him myself. I will tell him how they were torturing men and women. And how hard it was to carry on and be positive and have a dream.”

Source – MEE

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Hundreds of Syrian families continue to languish in refugee camps, facing poverty and difficult conditions after being displaced from their homes and towns.

Since 2014, both the Syrian government and armed opposition groups have reached a series of agreements in a number of besieged areas, mainly aimed at allowing armed opposition fighters to leave government-besieged cities and towns to opposition-held areas in northern Syria, near the borders with Turkey.

Under such evacuation deals, thousands of rebels, along with their families, have been forced to surrender as a result of intense government shelling and sieges across a number of opposition-held towns around the capital Damascus, as well as in Aleppo and Homs.

While the government views such agreements as an opportunity for civilians to flee to safer areas, opposition groups, activists, and some civilians view the deals as a form of forced displacement.

In December 2016, the Syrian government recaptured Aleppo from rebels and the subsequent evacuation deal gave the Syrian army and its allies full control of the city after years of fighting. The United Nations said the forced displacement of eastern Aleppo amounted to a “war crime”.

Most have been transferred to the northern suburbs of Aleppo, and Idlib, which now hosts over 900,000 displaced Syrians, placing a significant strain on local communities and resources.

Al Jazeera spoke to two families who were relocated from Aleppo and the Damascus suburbs to camps in Idlib’s suburbs.

From Aleppo to Idlib
Ali Haj Khaled is a 41-year-old father of three children. His family used to live in al-Myasaar neighbourhood in Aleppo, where he was born. His family now lives in the town of Salqin in the northern Idlib suburbs.

For my family and I, and for many other people who have been and are still being displaced from their homes all around Syria, I believe being back at home is way more comfortable for us than living in camps.

Despite the siege we lived under and the hunger we were facing, we were happier then than we are now. We are living in tents now. Is this seen as a better life in the eyes of those who wanted us to leave? Do they think we live in better conditions now?

They should have left us back at home to die under the rubble or from starvation; at least we would have died with dignity in our own homes.

They gave us no choice but to leave and here we are, barely finding money to buy basic necessities which are already so expensive.

From the Damascus suburbs to Idlib
Hundreds of armed opposition fighters and their families left the Damascus suburb of Moadamiyah on October 19, 2016, towards Idlib, in northern Syria.

Jamela is a 35-year-old mother of two young girls who now lives with her family in a camp outside Idlib. Her family used to live in Moadamiyah just outside of Damascus.

We lived under a siege in Moadamiyah for nearly three years. We lived under air strikes, in hunger and with a shortage of basic supplies.

Last Ramadan was like every Ramadan we’ve had since 2012 – bombs and clashes day and night, but life went on for us. We continued to go out to buy our resources; men were still going to work, just like many other families living in rebel-held areas.

My husband, Basem, used to work as a teacher in one of the schools in the neighbourhood. Basem’s job was the only source of income helping us survive. We managed to keep our strength despite the price hikes caused by the siege. We survived until the very last moment.

We did not want to go to a government-controlled area, our home is here. We had nowhere else to go and we could not afford to rent a house in Damascus.

Our lives and memories are all buried under the rubble of Moadamiyah’s streets and destroyed buildings, we lived there knowing we had to face death every step of the way during this war.

But now we are struggling to buy resources even more, to pay rent for a small room, and to find clean water. My husband and I run around day and night to maintain a decent home, a place for our two children to sleep every night.

We do not want to ask anyone for help; it has become very frustrating to ask people for help.

No one has helped us with aid or anything, back home or here at the camps. We even registered our names at the local council here, but we have received nothing. We have been here for over five months.

The things I miss the most about my home during Ramadan was when I used to prepare the iftar meal every day, and how we were together with the rest of our family, friends and neighbours. Despite being bombed and shelled, even during iftar time, we still felt some sort of joy. We’re nostalgic every day this Ramadan.

We miss our home and the smell of our food. Everything is different now, we do not belong here. We are still in Syria, I know, but I do not feel at home. There is no place like home, even if I were to live in a palace I will not be happy, because I am living away from my roots.

I miss the sound of the call to prayer from the nearby mosque, sounds of “mosaharate” (the name given to a person who walks and beats a drum in residential areas) waking people up for “suhur”.

To be honest, I sometimes miss the sound of warplanes and the bombs, because it reminds me of home.

Everything has changed in our lives. We do not know when we are going back home. Maybe one day we will be able to go back home. I hope so, I’m praying for that.

Source – Al Jazeera

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Evacuations from four besieged areas of Syria resumed on Wednesday, Syrian state television, a Hezbollah media unit and a war monitor reported, days after a suicide bombing killed dozens in a convoy which was part of the same reciprocal agreement.

Some 45 buses carrying 3,000 people left the rebel-besieged Shiite villages of Fua and Kefraya near Idlib for government-controlled Aleppo, while a convoy of 11 buses left army-besieged Zabadani, the Hezbollah media unit said.

On Saturday, a bomb attack on a convoy of evacuees from Fua and Kefraya killed 126 people, including more than 60 children, the war monitor, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, reported.

Under the deal, civilians and pro-government fighters from the Shiite villages were travelling by bus to government-controlled Aleppo, while insurgents and their families from Zabadani and Madaya near Damascus crossed to rebel-held territory, having first gone to Aleppo.

Three buses on Wednesday also carried wounded people from Saturday’s convoy attack, as well as the remains of those who had died, the Hezbollah military media unit reported.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Saturday’s bombing.

Islamist rebel group Ahrar al-Sham, which has many fighters in the area, denied any involvement.

The government blamed “terrorists” – a catch-all term for its opponents.

The evacuation deal was brokered late last month by Qatar, a longtime supporter of the rebels, and Iran, a key regime ally. Its implementation had been repeatedly delayed.

Source – Middle east eye

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The march was organised as a follow-up to the protest for the massacred civilians of Aleppo in December.

Hundreds of people marched across London yesterday in solidarity with the Syrian people and their struggle against long-time ruler Bashar Al-Assad.

The protests, which began at lunchtime, passed through the busy shopping district of Oxford Street, on to Regent Street, passed Piccadilly until it ended outside 10 Downing Street, the official home of the prime minister. It was organised by the Solidarity for Syrians programme.

One of the organisers, Khaled Al Maj, said: “The protests are our time to send our message, we will carry on even if it is 20 years on from the beginning of the revolution, I will not stop until Assad has gone down.”

George Morris joined the protest to remember and to “commemorate six years of one of the worst conflicts of our lifetime”.

Young Syrians took part hoping for a solution, feeling angry and frustrated at a world that seems to have turned a blind eye to their hopes of a free and democratic solution.

Syrian Roz said: “I know coming to this protest today isn’t going to change anything because if something was going to change and if someone was actually interested in helping the Syrian people politically it would have happened by now.”

“We are demanding our rights and freedom and democracy, we all stand as one against this injustice and this is why we are here today with people and especially the youth who are demanding freedom,” Tunisian Saoussen said.

Fighting for justice
Amnesty International volunteers Carl and Catriona spoke of the international community’s duty to put “pressure towards getting justice for Syrians and ensuring Assad and other groups do not get away with the violations they have committed over the last six years.”

The continuous pursuit of democracy in the Arab world is set to be a challenging endeavour demonstrator Salem believes. “Democracy in a region like the Middle East takes a long time and we cannot expect it to happen immediately. However, our demands remain the same: No to Daesh. No to Assad and his dictatorial regime and finally No to anyone who endangers the right for Syrians to gain their own choice of democracy.”

Louis Wickett-Padgham said: “We are first humans and so we must condemn this 21st-century genocide on innocent people.”

Source – MEMO

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Up to 300 worshippers were in the mosque during evening prayers when it was hit by what a local source says was likely to be a Russian air strike.

Dozens of people were killed by air strikes on the town of Aljinah in Aleppo’s western countryside, local sources have said.

The jets struck as the mosque was full of worshippers at evening prayer, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the Syrian war via a network of contacts across the country.

The Observatory put the death toll at 42, but other sources have quoted figures above 50.

The Syrian Civil Defense, volunteer paramedics known as the White Helmets, said first responders are racing to the scene.”Civilian defence teams are working to reach those trapped under the mosque’s ruins,” Yahya Jawad, a rescue worker in the town, told Turkey’s Anadolu Agency.

“There were 200 to 300 people in the mosque,” he added.

Aljinah is 30 kilometres west of Aleppo where nearby villages and town are witnessing frequent clashes between opposition and regime forces.

The town’s population has been swollen by refugees, UN agencies have said.

Jawad said he believed the air strikes were carried out by Russian fighter jets.

The Syrian regime and Russian military have carried out many air strikes in the Idlib and Aleppo provinces during the war.

The United States has also carried out strikes there in recent months, targeting the former Nusra Front, which until last year was affiliated with Al Qaeda.

Source – Trt world

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Photo of Mohammed Mohiedin Anis listening to music in his destroyed bedroom touches a chord around the world on eve of the sixth anniversary of Syria’s civil war

Weak spring sunlight enters Mohammed Mohiedin Anis’s Aleppo bedroom through windows missing their glass and broken shutters. Amid the rubble and dust, he sits on the edge of his bed, pipe in hand and legs crossed, listening to a record player.

The haunting portrait taken by AFP photographer Joseph Eid is as perfectly composed as a painting. It has commanded attention around the world since its publication on March 9 for encapsulating not just the destruction of Syria’s brutal civil war, but the Syrian people’s determination to soldier on despite their circumstances.

Mr Anis – also known as Abu Omar – was first interviewed in a moving story filed by AFP in early 2016, when he was living in a rebel-controlled neighbourhood of the city. Before the war, he had been an enthusiastic collector of vintage cars. At one point he had 30 to his name, but as the conflict progressed and territory swapped hands between the government and rebels his collection was decimated.

In December Aleppo fell completely back under government control after four and a half years of bitter fighting.

AFP’s Beirut Bureau Chief Sammy Ketz and photographer Joseph Eid recently travelled to the city to document how residents such as 70-year-old Mr Anis were coping in the husk of what was once known as ‘the Jewel of Syria.’

After being directed to his home by locals, the two journalists found that one-third of his prized cars have been stolen or destroyed in the recent fighting.

While Mr Anis showed them around his ruined home, he mentioned that his vinyl record player – which doesn’t need the patchy electricity supply to operate – was one of the things that brought him joy each day.

Settling in by lighting his pipe, he played traditional songs by one of his favourite Syrian singers, Mohamed Dia al-Din.

“He is so attached to his past and to the things that he always cherished and loved, and without them, he will lose his identity,” Eid told Time. “That’s why he insists on staying and getting back his life again.”

While the Syrian civil war is on the brink of entering its seventh year, it is far from over.

It is images such as these that remind the wider world of the conditions Syrians still face, Eid says. “This picture touches the soul of the human being,” he said.

“Whenever I feel or will feel any kind of despair or surrender to [life’s] problems and obstacles I will always [recall] the image of Abu Omar smoking his pipe while sitting on his rubble covered broken bed and listening to his favourite music.”

Source – Independent

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The sculpted mud domes of the villages southeast of Aleppo are collapsing from war damage and neglect after years on the front line between Syria’s army and Islamic State militants, their inhabitants long since gone.

But in Aleppo’s Jibreen shelter, home to refugees who have been unable or unwilling to return to their houses or flee further afield, the inhabitants of Qalayah, one of the villages from that area, swear they will one day recover their land.

“We raised sheep and had land. We sold everything when we left. God willing we shall return. It’s our village, we can’t leave it,” said a lean man in his 40s, traditional headdress worn over a long robe, who identified himself as Abu Mohammed.

Syria’s “beehive villages”, so-called for the distinctive conical shapes of their mud houses, have long attracted the attention of outsiders, but many have been deserted during the waves of conflict that have rolled across the country.

The plight of Syria’s rural districts has received less attention than that of its bomb-shattered cities. But with their wealth tied up in livestock or land, village folk are often less able to start afresh when forced to new surroundings.

The Syrian army captured the last rebel enclave in east Aleppo in December after months of siege and years of intense bombardment, and have made some gains against Islamic State to the east of the city, but fighting continues nearby.

In Jibreen, the villagers now live in a freezing industrial zone where large puddles in the muddy streets were iced over even at midday during a recent visit, and toddlers in bare feet chased chickens between warehouses.

However, whether they are ever able to make good on their hopes of a return to the villages, one of which appeared almost entirely uninhabitable last week, will most likely depend on how long Islamic State can hold out.

The jihadist group has been losing ground in northern Syria to three separate – and rival – forces: The Syrian army, Turkish-backed rebels and a U.S.-backed coalition of Kurdish-led militias.

Pillars of smoke rising behind the al-Jaboul salt lake near Abu Mohammed’s village of Qalayah as well as Rasm al-Nafl, an abandoned village visited by Reuters, indicated where Islamic State and the Syrian army were fighting.

‘Abandoned Villages’

A group of women in Jibreen who asked not to be named, standing with Abu Mohammed, said they had fled Qalayah in 2012 when Islamic State insurgents arrived in the area.

“They killed a man outside the village, cutting him through. Then an air strike hit our village,” said one of the women, clad in a brightly coloured headdress and with a gold tooth glinting in her mouth.

In Rasm al-Nafl, bullet holes scarred the walls and spent cartridges littered the ground. In a courtyard next to a mud house with collapsed roof, an orange jumper lay embedded in the mud and rubble along with a pair of silver high-heeled shoes.

Nearby lay a worn stone pillar that appeared to be from a much earlier period and pointed towards the rich history of even the arid parts of a region that has been home to some of the world’s great empires and civilisations.

In this and other villages on the road, the only occupants were Syrian soldiers, warming their hands around fires and watching tanks and other armoured vehicles roll past their bivouacs, where washing hung from hut doorways.

According to Abu Mohammed, the people of Rasm al-Nafl moved deeper into terrain held by Islamic State when the fighting neared, not out of any ideological sympathy with the ultra-hardline militants but in search of pasture for their herds.

However, he and the others from Qalayah sold their livestock and sought refuge in government-held areas of Aleppo.

‘Children Suffering The Most’
The hardship is worst for their children, who are only now able to attend school in a centre administered by UNHCR, the United Nations’ refugee agency, and run by a Syrian charity that operates in government-held areas.

Teachers at the school, which also serves refugees from parts of east Aleppo rendered uninhabitable by the fighting and are now living in Jibreen, said some of the children had had no formal education for years.

They live in rows of warehouses, each about 150 metres (yards) long and divided into 30 units. Between them, families sat in the sun, bundled up with blankets, and two men rode a horse-drawn cart carrying plastic sacks of firewood to sell.

In a classroom run by the Syrian Society for Social Development, about 30 children crammed onto a few benches, with some of the pictures they had drawn affixed to a concrete wall behind them.

When they arrived at Jibreen after years of war, many of them having lived in the rebel-held eastern Aleppo zone that was fiercely bombarded during the fighting, they were very aggressive, said Reem Ward, one of the charity workers.

“They wouldn’t stop hitting each other,” she said, but had since grown more peaceful.

While the younger children from Qalayah are at school, the older ones work in factories from the age of 13 or 14, according to Abu Mohammed. The boys leave to do military service a few years later.

Beyond Rasm al-Nafl, on the west side of Jaboul lake where a beautiful plump white bird waded in the salty water, pastoral life has returned as military conflict has abated, with shepherds grazing their flocks near mud villages.

But a return to damaged villages is not easy. Although the people said they still have the skills to mend or rebuild their distinctive beehive houses, they have sold all their sheep and long ago used the money for daily expenses.

“Even if we have to live in a tent, we have lands there so we will go back and work the land. If the government helps us with money we can buy more sheep. Otherwise we don’t have a chance,” Abu Mohammed said.

Source – Timeslive

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The al-Abed family reached safety after seeking asylum in Turkey, but ‘millions of Syrian children are not like me right now’, girl blogger says in letter

The seven-year-old who gained a worldwide following tweeting the horrors of the siege of Aleppo has written an open letter to the new US President asking him not to forget the other children caught up in the Syrian civil war.

“You must do something for the children of Syria because they are like your children and deserve peace like you,“ Bana al-Abed, who was evacuated with her family from the war-torn city in December, wrote to the newly inaugurated Donald Trump.

“I beg you, can you do something for the children of Syria? If you can, I will be your best friend,” she said on her Twitter account, alongside a photograph of the handwritten note.

The UN estimates that at least 15,000 children are among the more than 300,000 people who have been killed in Syria’s six-year-old civil war.

Bana’s mother Fatemeh, who teaches her daughter English and helped set up the famous Twitter account, said that Bana wrote the letter just before Mr Trump was inaugurated last week.

Some of her friends died in Aleppo, Bana wrote, which was the “city of death”.

“Right now in Turkey, I can go out and enjoy. I can go to school although I didn’t yet. That is why peace is important for everyone… However, millions of Syrian children are not like me right now and suffering… because of adult people.

“I know you will be the President of America, so can you please save the children and people of Syria? If you promise me you will do something for the children of Syria, I am already your new friend.”

Bana’s mother Fatemeh, who studied English at university, has been teaching Bana and her younger brothers the language, and helped Bana set up the famous account last September.

She used it to talk about her fear of Russian-backed regime bombing in east Aleppo, her wish to go to school, and her dreams of becoming a teacher one day.

The account attracted followers from over the world – as well as critics such as Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, who called her posts “terrorist propaganda”.

Turkish officials promised that Bana, her mother and father and her two younger brothers could resettle in Turkey if they managed to escape the besieged rebel enclave of east Aleppo.

Photos from her Twitter account now show her enjoying normal aspects of childhood such as playgrounds, sweet shops, and new books.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has supported Syria’s rebels in the conflict to date, as has the US, but President Trump is yet to make his position clear.

On the campaign trail he said that the US should focus on eliminating extremist groups such as Isis, suggesting that an alliance with the Syrian and Russian governments is his preferred way forward.

This week White House press secretary Sean Spicer reiterated that Mr Trump is “open to working with any country that shares our interest in defeating Isis.”

Mr Trump has also signed an executive order commanding the US’s Departments of State and Defence to come up with a plan for implementing “safe zones” in Syria to stem the flow of refugees from the country.

It is also expected that he will announce a temporary ban on asylum for people fleeing conflicts or persecution in Syria, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen

Source – independent.co.uk

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Having little money left to rent an apartment, they returned to their abandoned home in Ansari and fixed it as much as possible

Aleppo: The street looks as if it was hit by an earthquake and the bombed-out building in a former rebel-held northeastern neighbourhood of Aleppo is deserted — except for the second-floor apartment where Abdul Hamid Khatib and his family are staying.

There is no electricity or running water. The apartment windows are covered with nylon sheets and a hole caused by a shell in the sitting room wall is closed with a piece of metal, pierced by the exhaust pipe for the wood-burning heater.

Khatib and his family are the only occupants of the six-storey building and they keep its main gate locked with a metal chain, fearing looters. At night, they fumble around the two-bedroom apartment with candles.
But the family has nowhere else to go.

The 56-year-old blacksmith had been jobless for months and could not afford to continue paying rent. He was worried their apartment in Aleppo’s Ansari neighbourhood would be completely looted if they stayed away.

“A few days ago a man who brought some stuff over told me, ‘Is it possible that you live here?’ I said where can we go? At least this is our house and no one will ask us to leave,” said Hasnaa, Khatib’s wife.

Life and war have been very unkind to the Khatib family. The eldest son Mohammed was killed in the bombardment of east Aleppo in 2013 and their granddaughter Hasnaa, 4, was killed a year later by a bullet as she played on the balcony of her parents’ apartment. Their son Mahmoud died at work of severe burns while welding a metal container filled with gas.

Since July 2012, the family had to leave the house twice to move to safer areas, before returning home.

But in August 2016, when government forces intensified their offensive on east Aleppo, a Russian air strike near their home forced them to flee for the third time.

“It was so dangerous and our kids were terrified so we could not tolerate it anymore,” Abdul Hamid said.

In late December, government forces and their allies took control of east Aleppo, bringing the whole city under state control in the biggest victory for Al Assad since the country’s conflict began in March 2011.

The Khatib family — like many of east Aleppo’s residents — were taken to shelters in the village of Jibrin, just south of Aleppo, where they spent a week before returning to their hometown during the first week of January.

Having little money left to rent an apartment, they returned to their abandoned home in Ansari and fixed it as much as possible. They found many of their belongings looted including the refrigerator, stove, a microwave and seven gas cylinders.

The couple now lives in the apartment with their daughter Rasha, daughter-in-law and two grandchildren, Abdul Hamid and Rimas.

Their apartment appears in relatively good shape compared with nearby housing units. The buildings on either side of theirs are uninhabitable. Most buildings in their area are either a pile of metal and stones, or so damaged they’re no longer suitable to live in. Their home now attracts attention from curious passers-by as it’s the only apartment on the street with washed laundry hanging from the balcony and wood smoke coming from the heater.

Thousands of other families from east Aleppo have returned to their homes because they have nowhere else to go.
Others come in every day to look at their homes and take whatever they can carry with them — especially those in heavily damaged buildings. One neighbouring family came to check on their home about 50 meters away and found it could collapse at any moment.

Despite everything, Abdul Hamid Khatib is optimistic that the situation in his city can only get better. But his wife, Hasnaa, wishes they had fled Syria and joined the nearly four million refugees who settled in neighbouring countries, mostly Lebanon and Turkey.

“I feel life was so unjust to me. Although I am alive, I feel as if I am dead,” she said, sitting on a plastic chair in her living room.” I wish we left at the beginning of the crisis, even if we had to stay in the street.”

Source – Gulf news

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Thousands of people are starting to return to formerly rebel-held east Aleppo despite freezing weather and destruction “beyond imagination”, a top UN official told Reuters from the Syrian city.

In the last couple of days around 2,200 families have returned to the Hanano housing district, said Sajjad Malik, country representative in Syria for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

“People are coming out to east Aleppo to see their shops, their houses, to see if the building is standing and the house is not that looted … to see, should they come back,” he said in an interview.

But given the appalling conditions, the UN is not encouraging people to return.

“It is extremely, bitterly cold here,” said Malik. “The houses people are going back to have no windows or doors, no cooking facilities.”

Aid is vital to prevent more deaths. The UN is helping people to restart their lives in one room of their apartments to start with, he said, giving them mats, sleeping bags and plastic sheets to cover blown-out windows.

Hanano was one of the first Aleppo neighborhoods to fall to rebels in 2012, and the first to be retaken by the Syrian government on its way to seizing back full control of the northern city last month — the biggest victory for President Bashar Al-Assad in nearly six years of war.

As government forces rapidly advanced, some residents stayed put, tens of thousands fled of their own accord and around 35,000 fighters and civilians were evacuated in late December in convoys organized by the Syrian government.

After months of fierce Syrian and Russian airstrikes, reconstruction will take a long time, Malik said, but the immediate priority is to keep people warm and fed. UN-supported partners provide hot meals twice a day to 21,000 people, and 40,000 people get baked bread every day.

Over 1.1 million people once again have access to clean water in bottles or through tankers and wells.

Mobile clinics are up and running, and more than 10,000 children have received polio vaccinations. Thousands of children who have not been able to attend school need reintegrating into the education system through remedial classes to rebuild their confidence, Malik said.

There was no register of births, deaths and marriages in the rebel-held sector, so the UN is working with the government to issue people with papers. “I met a woman with five children and she was excited that she now has her kids registered as Syrians. She has ID cards and a family book,” he said.

Bombing has destroyed hospitals, schools, roads and houses, and damaged the two main water pumping stations.
The experienced UN official said the level of destruction surpassed anything he had seen in conflict zones like Afghanistan and Somalia.

“Nothing would have prepared us to see the scale of destruction there, it’s beyond imagination.”

Source – Saudi Gazette|Reuters

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After weeks of heavy fighting, Damascus announces complete victory in the battle to retake eastern Aleppo from rebels.

The Syrian army announced the country’s second city Aleppo has been fully recaptured from rebel fighters, the government’s biggest victory in the nearly six-year civil war.

The last group of rebels and their families holed up in a small enclave in eastern Aleppo were evacuated on Thursday, under a deal that gives the army and its allies full control of the ancient city after years of fighting.

“Thanks to the blood of our heroic martyrs, the heroic deeds and sacrifices of our armed forces and the allied forces, and the steadfastness of our people, the General Command of the Army and the Armed Forces announces the return of security and stability to Aleppo,” said a military statement read by an army general on state television.

The statement said the victory in Aleppo is a “strategic transformation and a turning point in the war on terrorism and a deadly blow to the terrorist project and its supporters”.

It is a further incentive, it added, to go on fighting to “eradicate terrorism and restore security and stability to every span of the homeland”.

It represents a momentous victory for President Bashar al-Assad and a crushing defeat for Syria’s opposition.
Western Aleppo erupted in celebratory gunfire seen on Syrian TV, which showed uniformed soldiers and civilians shouting slogans in support of Assad.

The ancient city of Aleppo had been divided into rebel and government parts since 2012.

The announcement came shortly after state television reported that the last convoy carrying rebels and civilians had left eastern Aleppo.

“The last four buses carrying terrorists and their families arrived in Ramussa”, a district south of Aleppo controlled by government forces, the channel said.

Rebel evacuations were set in motion last week after Syria’s opposition agreed to surrender its last footholds in eastern Aleppo. Since then, some 35,000 fighters and civilians have been bused out, according to the United Nations.

Ahmed Qorra Ali, an official with the rebel group Ahrar al-Sham, confirmed “the last convoy has left the rebel-controlled area”.

Earlier, the Red Cross said more than 4,000 fighters had left rebel-held areas of the city in the “last stages” of the evacuation.

Rebel forces agreed to withdraw from the bastion after a month-long army offensive that drove them from more than 90 percent of their former territory.

The evacuation agreement was brokered by Russia, which launched air strikes in support of Assad’s regime last year, and Turkey, which has supported some rebel groups.

The loss of east Aleppo is the biggest blow to Syria’s rebel movement since fighting started in March 2011. More than 310,000 people have been killed since then.

It puts the government in control of the country’s five main cities: Aleppo, Homs, Hama, Damascus, and Latakia.
“The liberation of Aleppo is not only a victory for Syria but also for those who really contributed”
The Syrian government’s recapture of Aleppo is a major turning point in the Syrian civil war with potentially powerful political repercussions.

“On the political level, this is a great loss,” Yasser al-Youssef of the Nureddin al-Zinki rebel group told AFP news agency. “For the revolution, it is a period of retreat and a difficult turning point.”

Referring to Assad’s closest allies, Ali of the Ahrar al-Sham rebel group said: “Aleppo is now under the occupation of Russia and Iran.”

Source – Al Jazeera

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