Civil war has been raging in Syria for almost nine years. Since then, the people there have suffered many humanitarian disasters. But the current wave of refugees surpasses everything else so far.
They seek protection wherever they can find it. In Asas in northern Syria, the refugees even live on the back of trucks, protected from the cold, wind and rain only by thin plastic tarpaulins that they have stretched out. To eat, they crouch on the wet floor between puddles. “A whole family lives in this truck,” says Rafad Kinnu, a member of the German Welthungerhilfe organization in Asas, on a video he has filmed. “Because they have no other accommodation.” A few meters further, others have erected provisional plastic tents in the mud. The refugee camps that they could accommodate have long been overcrowded.
Aid workers are slowly running out of words to describe the drama of the situation in northwestern Syria. Dirk Hegmanns, Regional Director of Welthungerhilfe for Syria, speaks of the “worst refugee crisis” since the outbreak of the civil war almost nine years ago, when the first people protested against the government and the rulers released their security forces.
Air strikes hit hospitals
What has remained of the uprising is the last major rebel stronghold around the city of Idlib, which is however getting smaller and smaller. President Bashar al-Assad’s troops and their allies have been advancing since last year, supported by Russian air strikes. Only in the past few days could they take up larger areas again.
Abian Sam’an: Rescue workers take care of a wounded girl after an air raid. (Source: dpa)
According to the UN, at least 900,000 people have fled fighting, bombing and the advancing Assad forces since the beginning of December, most of them women and children. They try to find accommodation in areas that are already extremely densely populated due to previous waves of refugees. The helpers are often overwhelmed. “We manage to bring help,” says Hegmanns. “But there are an incredible number of people in a short time, so it is difficult to react.” So everything is lacking: accommodations, food, heating and medical care.
Also because hospitals are repeatedly hit in air raids. Opposition activists accuse Syria and its ally Russia of targeting vital infrastructure to force people to surrender.
Even in refugee camps, attacks are still at risk. The aid organization Doctors Without Borders (MSF) reported that, in the past few days, provisional IDP camps had been bombed in the west of the city of Aleppo. “The situation of the people is desperate,” says MSF country coordinator Julien Delozanne. “The attacks are now hitting areas that were previously considered safe.”
Cold and bombs
And as if the humanitarian catastrophe weren’t big enough, cold winter temperatures make the situation even worse. At night the thermometer often drops below zero degrees. Some of the pictures in the area show snow, elsewhere rain has softened the ground. Helpers report of children who died because of the cold. Just like an almost 18-month-old sick girl that the father took to a hospital in the city of Afrin, as a doctor at the clinic reports: “When the girl arrived, she was dead.”
(Source: t-online.de)
For the refugees, it’s about survival. “People don’t know what to live on today or the next day,” says Dirk Hegmanns from Welthungerhilfe. The region is experiencing a “blatant humanitarian disaster”. Many now only have what they could somehow carry with them when fleeing.
Like the family of Diab Allusch, 75 years old, a peasant with a mustache and tooth gaps, who has wrapped a red and white cloth around his head. With his wife and six small children, he fled the city of Maarat al-Numan from Assad’s troops. Now they live near Idlib in a destroyed building, without windows and doors, without a proper kitchen, a makeshift toilet outside. A staircase without a railing leads to the first floor where there are debris. The dirt is on the faces and clothes of the children. After all, with collected wood, the family can heat a stove in one room.
“That means a massacre”
“I have never experienced anything (bad) in my whole life,” says Diab Allusch taciturn. In order to survive, he sells what little he still has. At least once there is a slight smile on the old man’s face that looks frail. When he says that his wife is expecting her seventh child.
However, like many others, the escape could not be over for him. Assad was confident of victory this week in a television speech: his troops would continue the offensive until the whole of Syria was “liberated”. And the rebels have been unable to stop their opponents in the past.
If Assad’s troops advance further, not only will the number of refugees increase, but the area of refuge will also decrease. The Turkey has closed its borders because it has already taken in more than 3.5 million Syrians. Rafad Kinnu fears the worst: “If the Assad regime comes, it means a massacre,” he predicts. “Then a lot of people will die. And they will try to get to Turkey. But that will be impossible.”
In our Video let us two refugees share their fate, tell of their desperate attempts to stay alive in the civil war.
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