The destruction is colossal .. the eyes can’ t take it in, pictures, let alone words, can’ t explain it and the mind can’ t comprehend it
WE SAT in the open air in what used to be Mahmoud Al-Hussan’s living room as the 45-year-old said: “I try to cry but there are no more tears. There is nothing left.”
Between 2012 and 2016 Mahmoud’s neighbourhood, Jabal Badro in eastern Aleppo, was the site of one of the horrific pitched battles between Syrian government forces and militia groups, which left the area completely destroyed with many dead.
Mahmoud’s pregnant wife and five children were killed when a mortar struck his home and flattened two stories, leaving him crushed in the rubble.
“This was my home but it was destroyed by shells,” he said. “My wife was pregnant so we stayed here until she gave birth. I was in the market and came home for a nap. My wife wanted to go for a walk but I encouraged her to stay at home. She was upstairs. Then the bomb struck.
“The first floor was completely destroyed. I didn’t know what happened. People in the hospital told me my wife and children died when I was in the hospital. I never saw my wife and children again. Neighbours buried them. My leg was crushed when the building collapsed.
“I was devastated when I heard my wife and children had been killed. I died then but God revived me. God gives and God takes away.”
Mahmoud was one of many people I met in Jabal Badro, where SCIAF are part of an emergency programme to help the poorest survive. Everyone in the neighbourhood is extremely poor and in need of support. There is no electricity and only a sporadic water supply.
SCIAF, the Scottish Catholic International Aid Fund, support some of the world’s poorest people in 27 countries across Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America.
In Syria, thanks to donations from Scotland, they are working with their partners Caritas Aleppo to provide food, blankets, water, hygiene kits, medical help, care for the elderly, classes for children and money for rent to more than 24,000 people in Jabal Badro and two other areas of the city.
While the Syrian government control most of the country, the war continues. Mortar shells keep landing in western Aleppo daily and I heard for myself explosions and long rounds of automatic gunfire in the distance. The contested area of Idlib lies just 33 miles to the south-west of Aleppo. The human cost of this war is sickening. An estimated 511,000 people have died in
the conflict so far but behind every statistic is an innocent human being.
I met Amal, a seven-year-old girl whose leg was amputated after a mortar hit her home and left her crushed under the rubble.
Her mum, Samar Ahmmad AlAbdallah, 35, said: “I would not wish this to happen to anyone. Amal is now starting to realise what is going on and what has happened to her.
“She asks why she is the only one among her friends with one leg and why it only happened to her.
“Every time I buy her a toy doll it has become a habit that she cuts one of her legs off. What will happen to Amal? I don’t know.”
Sumia Atto, 51, lost her husband when “rebels” who controlled her area – people she had known who lived in her neighbourhood – shot her husband six times and stole his car.
She found his body crumpled on the floor
in a corner of a local hospital. Sumia and her children had to bury his body in the local park.
Sumia told me: “We had no means of life. We couldn’t afford bread. I had to go and get rotten bread left on the street to feed the children.
“We were trapped here in the conflict with the bombing and shooting. We had just a candle. During the winter there was no means of heat, just blankets.” Even when
Every time I buy her a toy doll, she cuts one of her legs off SAMAR AHMMAD AL-ABDALLAH DESCRIBES AMPUTEE DAUGHTER’S ANGUISH
the guns go quiet, the suffering continues. Sumia now lives with her two granddaughters, eight and six, while their father fights in the war, and her three young sons, who are 16, 12 and 10 years.
“The children used to go to school but now they have to work. The two youngest boys work in a plastics factory.
“They have blisters on their fingers from the hot machines. This is their time for school but what can I do? They have to work so we can survive.” Walking around the city, it’s difficult to describe the scale of destruction. Even with unlimited resources, it will take many years, if not decades, to rebuild.
In Aleppo alone, 70 per cent of the city has been destroyed or badly damaged.
As I travelled with SCIAF director Alistair Dutton, a veteran of many humanitarian disasters, he told me: “You don’t often see humanitarian disasters like this, a war in a developed country, with so many, well built, multi-storey buildings blown to pieces. “The scale of destruction is absolutely colossal. To see whole districts of a city pounded to smithereens is beyond comprehension. “The eyes can’t take it in, photographs, let alone words, can’t explain it, and the mind can’t really comprehend it. “The plight of the people who live in Aleppo and other cities such as Homs, and what they have been through was like hell on Earth. Their strength, courage and sheer hope is utterly humbling.”
Despite the fighting, the rebuilding process is already starting in many places. n both Aleppo and Homs, families have started to return to their homes and SCIAF’s local partners are helping to clear glass, rubble and burnt furniture, rebuild walls, replace doors, windows and their frames and repair wiring and lights.
A Franciscan friar, Father Ibrahim Alsabach of St Francis’ parish in Aleppo is one such partner who is helping local people, both Christians and Muslims, to rebuild their homes, as well as providing food, water and diesel to heat their homes.
He said: “They send us death and we give them back life.
“They throw hatred at us and we offer love in return through that charity which is manifested in forgiveness and prayer for the conversion of those who attack us.”