Syrians in the country’s rebel-held north on Monday marked the 10-year anniversary of chemical attacks that killed over 1,400 people near Damascus, one of the conflict’s many horrors that went unpunished.
“I was in such shock. I smelt death,” said paramedic Mohammed Sleiman from Zamalka in Eastern Ghouta, who lost five members of his family that day.
On August 21, 2013, regime forces attacked Eastern Ghouta and Moadamiyet Al-Sham, rebel-held areas outside the capital.
The opposition accused the regime of using toxic gas in the attacks, which killed around 1,400 people, including more than 400 children.
The government denied the allegations. Speaking from the northern city of Afrin, held by pro-Turkish rebels, Sleiman recalled rushing to the scene after hearing news of the attack.
He wrapped his face with a piece of cloth to protect himself from the gas.
“I found a large number of people hurt or dead. It was like the apocalypse. The scene was indescribable,” the 40-year-old told AFP ahead of the anniversary.
When he went back to his family home, he found it empty. With his brother, he went to look for them at a nearby medical facility.
“I found my father and all the neighbors, all of them just with numbers, no names. I remember my father was number 95. I identified the bodies of the people I knew,” he said.
Syria’s civil war broke out in 2011 after the government’s repression of peaceful demonstrations escalated into a deadly conflict that pulled in foreign powers and global jihadists.
The war has killed more than half a million people and forced around half of the country’s pre-war population from their homes.
Sleiman later learned that his other brother, his sister-in-law and their two children had also been killed in the attack. “We dug a communal grave for hundreds of people and buried them close together,” he said.
“When I tell the story, I can see it all in front of me as if it was now,” he said, adding that he was receiving psychological counselling because of the trauma.
Activists in 2013 posted dozens of amateur videos on YouTube said to show the effects of the attack, including footage of dozens of corpses, many of them children, outstretched on the ground.—AFP
