Syrian Father Who Lost Twins to Poison Gas Uprooted Again
BEIRUT —
When Abdel Hamid Yousef lost his 9-month-sometime twins in the poison gas attack that hit the Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun in April 2017, the world witnessed his heartbreak and grief in the video of him cradling their lifeless bodies in his arms, bidding them cheerio in the chaotic backwash of the attack.
Determined to go on with his life despite the pain, he has since remarried, and now has a ane-year-old daughter who brings much-needed joy to what remains of the family. Merely tragedy keeps chasing the 31-year-old former shopkeeper.
Equally Syria's ceremonious war edges toward a bloody end, many displaced persons such as Yousef fear that a government win will bring little relief — or sense of closure.
He recently fled Khan Sheikhoun again, joining tens of thousands fleeing heavy airstrikes and bombardment every bit regime forces swept into the town, on the southern edge of the country'southward final insubordinate stronghold in the province of Idlib.
He now lives among thousands of other internally displaced Syrians in a settlement near the Turkish border, worried he will never be able to go back to the hometown he left behind.
"I buried the almost important affair I take in my life there, my children and my siblings. I used to find some relief by visiting them twice a week at the grave," he said in a recent interview. "I cannot exercise that anymore."
Most of all, Yousef fears the takeover past President Bashar Assad's forces of Khan Sheikhoun means that any leftover bear witness from the April 2017 toxic gas set on will now be erased forever.
"The biggest fearfulness at present, after regime forces and the Russians and allied militiamen took over Khan Sheikhoun is that they volition tamper with the evidence with regards to the chemical weapons attack and distort the facts," he said.
The assail in opposition-held Khan Sheikhoun in the early forenoon of April 4, 2017, left residents gasping for breath and convulsing in the streets and overcrowded hospitals. Nearly 90 people were killed in the attack, one of the deadliest in years.
At the fourth dimension, the Usa, United kingdom and French republic pointed a finger at the Syrian authorities, saying their experts had constitute that nerve agents were used in the assault. Days afterward, the U.S. fired 59 U.S. Tomahawk missiles at the Shayrat air base in primal Syria, proverb the set on on Khan Sheikhoun was launched from the base. It marked the first Western airstrikes on targets of Assad'due south government since the start of the conflict in March 2011.
The Syrian authorities and its Russian allies denied there was a chemic assault, while Syrian officials later said the air force bombed a rebel armory that had chemical weapons stored inside.
From his tent in the settlement for the displaced chosen Mokhayyam Karamah, Arabic for "Nobility Campsite," well-nigh the town of Atmeh, Yousef recalls that fateful day when he lost his twins, Aya and Ahmed, wife Dalal and sixteen other relatives.
Information technology is a story he has told dozens of times, virtually how Khan Sheikhoun residents woke up at half-past six in the forenoon to the sound of explosions. How people started running out of their homes and onto the street, trying to assistance i another. How he told his wife to have the twins to safety exterior. The people he saw foaming at the mouth and nose.
He recalls how he ran to his blood brother's house to notice him and his family unit dead. His other brother and nephew, also dead. His niece who was around xiii, also dead. He lost consciousness and woke upward 4 hours later to exist told that his twins and wife had died. They were among the 89 people who died as a effect of what experts accept determined was an attack using sarin, an outlawed nerve toxin.
In this April 4, 2017, photograph, Abdel Hamid Yousef, holds his twin babies, who were killed in a chemic weapons attack in Khan Sheikhoun, Syria. He lost the twins, his wife and 16 other relatives in the poisonous substance gas attack. Determined to continue with his life, Yousef remarried and has an 11-month-onetime daughter. But tragedy keeps chasing the 31-year-old erstwhile shopkeeper.
(Alaa Yousef )
In footage filmed by his cousin that was widely circulated later, Yousef, then 29, is seen seated in the front end seat of a van cradling his twins, holding them in each arm. He stroked their pilus and choked back tears, mumbling, "Say goodbye, babe, say goodbye."
Yousef keeps photos and videos of the attack's backwash on his phone that he flips through from time to fourth dimension.
He sits on the flooring and plays Legos with his xi-month-old daughter, whom he named Aya, after his first daughter. Her pilus is in curly pigtails and she is wearing a sleeveless yellow T-shirt with the words "Dearest" printed on it and a center in the middle.
(Associated Press)
Yousef said that after spending some time in Turkey for treatment after the gas assault, he then chose to return to Khan Sheikhoun, held by rebels.
He decided to effort and build a new life and a new home. He got married and had Aya. He gradually plant some happiness.
Merely then government troops began an assail on Idlib and the nonstop battery of Khan Sheikhoun returned. A new wave of noncombatant displacement began. As the bombardment got unbearable and the troops encircled the boondocks, he decided to leave, fleeing with the masses to safer areas near the Turkish border.
"The final days felt like I was maxim goodbye to everything I concord dearest to my heart. I had already lost my children and at present I've lost my state. My situation has become very, very tragic," he said.
The Syrian civil war, now it'southward in its ninth year, has left an estimated half a million people dead. Yousef wants the mortality to cease. As a well-known witness and survivor of the chemical weapons attack, he says he gets frequent threats from the government side, just says he'll never finish talking about what happened. He wants accountability.
"I desire to send a message to Western countries to shoulder their responsibility and protect the lives of remaining civilians," he said.
Karam writes for the Associated Printing.
Source: https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2019-09-04/syrian-father-who-lost-twins-to-poison-gas-uprooted-again#:~:text=Abdel%20Hamid%20Yousef%20plays%20with,1%2C%202019.
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