Even as UN representatives are now working to disarm the Assad Government's chemical weapons in Syria, the Assad government continues heavy air strikes in cities, including Raqqa. (The Syrian Revolution 2011 site gives up to date news.)
The war in Syria is far from over.
Here are testimonies from people who survived the August chemical attack in Syria to remind us all of the awfulness of war.
Testimonies of Syrian Chemical Attack that happened August 21, 2013
From Syria Direct:
Testimony from a boy from the eastern Suburbs of Damascus
First thing, my grandfather lives upstairs, and we were asleep. The aircraft hit us and the voices were very loud. We woke up all of us, my brother went upstairs to tell my grandpa to come downstairs to escape from the gunpowder and the shrapnel.
They came down and as my brother was coming down he smelled the gunpowder and started to feel pain in his stomach, he started to throw up and was about to die, he started to have difficulty in breathing and died. They smelled the gunpowder smell and laid down on the ground. My grandpa was sitting in front of us and suddenly he laid down and his head hit the ground and he died, his wife was near him and she rolled on the ground also and died, my siblings also died, I was sitting on the sofa away from them, I stayed there.
Q: What did you do? I do not know, I do not know what brought me here.
Q: You could not do anything? I do not know
Q: Didn’t you scream? I started crying, crying and crying, what brought me here
Q: And you fainted and fell on the ground? NO, I DID NOT, I did not,
Q: And now, where is your mom and dad? They are dead.
From Infosurhoy.com
Testimony from Mohammad al-Baik
There generally was no blood, except in rare cases, but the voices and screams of the injured were terrifying...The majority of patients were convulsing, felt nauseated, were thirsty and were unable to see or breathe, with swelling on their lips and around their eyes. What affected me the most was the sight of the wounded children and the screams of mothers who lost family members.
From The Guardian
Testimony from Ashraf Hassan, 18 and his four friends
Around 1.30am, we started to hear shouts of people for help. We did not hear any attack or shelling. We went out to find out that the district is in complete chaos and panic. At 2am, mortars started to fall.
We began to break in houses to check out about the people inside. In one of the houses, I found four brothers sleeping opposite each other dead in their bed and their parents were dead too in another room. All of them suffocated. I could see foam on their mouths and noses.
I helped many other guys evacuate bodies and some people who were still alive … until I myself started to smell the gas.
The smell was like cooking gas. My friends told me to wear a mask on my nose and mouth but I began to feel nausea and vomiting. My eyes turned very red and started to itch.
I felt I'm almost going to lose consciousness. I woke up today with very itching eyes and could not open them at all, so I came to the hospital for treatment.
From The Guardian
Testimony of Abu Omar, from Zemaika
I ran to my house immediately to check if my wife and kids were OK. When I reached home, I began to smell something like vinegar and rotten eggs. Then, I heard people shouting that the district was under attack by chemical rockets. I and some of my colleagues ran to the FSA headquarters in Zemalka to get ambulances to evacuate the people.
We were in a district called Al-Mazra'a. We started to knock on the doors, calling people to get out. Those who were not responding or opening the doors, we began to break their doors and look for people inside. We were able to evacuate 20 people. None of them were dead but they were suffocating.
We distributed them among the makeshift hospitals in the district. It is really a miracle that none of the victims were dead ... though some of them were foaming at the mouth and their bodies were turning blue.
Read also
Read also my other blog entries about Syria:
Photos courtesy of wikimedia
All for now,
Cecilia
The war in Syria is far from over.
Here are testimonies from people who survived the August chemical attack in Syria to remind us all of the awfulness of war.
Testimonies of Syrian Chemical Attack that happened August 21, 2013
From Syria Direct:
Testimony from a boy from the eastern Suburbs of Damascus
First thing, my grandfather lives upstairs, and we were asleep. The aircraft hit us and the voices were very loud. We woke up all of us, my brother went upstairs to tell my grandpa to come downstairs to escape from the gunpowder and the shrapnel.
They came down and as my brother was coming down he smelled the gunpowder and started to feel pain in his stomach, he started to throw up and was about to die, he started to have difficulty in breathing and died. They smelled the gunpowder smell and laid down on the ground. My grandpa was sitting in front of us and suddenly he laid down and his head hit the ground and he died, his wife was near him and she rolled on the ground also and died, my siblings also died, I was sitting on the sofa away from them, I stayed there.
Q: What did you do? I do not know, I do not know what brought me here.
Q: You could not do anything? I do not know
Q: Didn’t you scream? I started crying, crying and crying, what brought me here
Q: And you fainted and fell on the ground? NO, I DID NOT, I did not,
Q: And now, where is your mom and dad? They are dead.
From Infosurhoy.com
Testimony from Mohammad al-Baik
There generally was no blood, except in rare cases, but the voices and screams of the injured were terrifying...The majority of patients were convulsing, felt nauseated, were thirsty and were unable to see or breathe, with swelling on their lips and around their eyes. What affected me the most was the sight of the wounded children and the screams of mothers who lost family members.
Testimony from Ashraf Hassan, 18 and his four friends
Around 1.30am, we started to hear shouts of people for help. We did not hear any attack or shelling. We went out to find out that the district is in complete chaos and panic. At 2am, mortars started to fall.
We began to break in houses to check out about the people inside. In one of the houses, I found four brothers sleeping opposite each other dead in their bed and their parents were dead too in another room. All of them suffocated. I could see foam on their mouths and noses.
I helped many other guys evacuate bodies and some people who were still alive … until I myself started to smell the gas.
The smell was like cooking gas. My friends told me to wear a mask on my nose and mouth but I began to feel nausea and vomiting. My eyes turned very red and started to itch.
I felt I'm almost going to lose consciousness. I woke up today with very itching eyes and could not open them at all, so I came to the hospital for treatment.
From The Guardian
Testimony of Abu Omar, from Zemaika
I ran to my house immediately to check if my wife and kids were OK. When I reached home, I began to smell something like vinegar and rotten eggs. Then, I heard people shouting that the district was under attack by chemical rockets. I and some of my colleagues ran to the FSA headquarters in Zemalka to get ambulances to evacuate the people.
We were in a district called Al-Mazra'a. We started to knock on the doors, calling people to get out. Those who were not responding or opening the doors, we began to break their doors and look for people inside. We were able to evacuate 20 people. None of them were dead but they were suffocating.
We distributed them among the makeshift hospitals in the district. It is really a miracle that none of the victims were dead ... though some of them were foaming at the mouth and their bodies were turning blue.
Read also
- UN Investigating 13 Different Chemical Weapons Attack in Syria
- Syria chemical attack: testimonies from the field
- Syrian eyewitness accounts of alleged chemical weapons attack in Damascus
- Syria chemical attack: What we know
- Chemical Experts Begin Mission on Syria Disarmament
- Missed Opportunity in Syria Haunts UN Official
- Syria chemical weapons cleanup a "Herculean" task
- Carnage as school hit in Syria air raid
Read also my other blog entries about Syria:
- Syrians fleeing war at rate not seen since Rwandan Genocide
- Syrian Revolutionary Poem & Destruction of Khalid bin Walid Mosque
- Children and the War in Syria
- The Rape of Women and the War in Syria
- Poet and Song Writer, Ibrahim Qashoush, Victim if Syrian War
- Jesuit Priest, Paolo Dall'Oglio - Another Casualty of Syrian War
- Two Organizations helping the children of Syria - re the War of Syria
- Assad Used Chemical Warfare in Syria - 1,300 dead in Ghouta
- In Solidarity with the Syrian People - Two Revolutionary Poems
- Formation of Syrian Rebel Alliance is Exactly What Assad Wants
- Testimonies of Syria Chemical Attacks
- Request for Prayers for Monasteries in Syria and Egypt
- Catching Up with news on the War in Syria
- The Horror of the War in Syria to the Civilian Population
Photos courtesy of wikimedia
All for now,
Cecilia
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