![]() Determined to continue with his life, he remarried, and has an 11-month-old daughter. Al-Yousef lost his baby twins, his wife and 16 other relatives in the poison gas attack that hit Syria’s Khan Sheikhoun in April 2017. 1, 2019 photo, Syrian Abdel Hamid al-Yousef poses for a picture, at a displaced settlement near the Turkish border called “Mokhayyam al-Karamah,” Arabic for “Dignity Camp,” near the town of Atmeh, in northern Syria. “I want to send a message to Western countries to shoulder their responsibility and protect the lives of remaining civilians,” he said. As a well-known witness and survivor of the chemical weapons attack, he says he gets frequent threats from the government side, but says he’ll never stop talking about what happened. The Syrian civil war, now it’s in its ninth year, has left an estimated half a million people dead. My situation has become very, very tragic,” he said. I had already lost my children and now I’ve lost my country. “The final days felt like I was saying goodbye to everything I hold dear to my heart. As the bombardment got unbearable and the troops encircled the town, he decided to leave, fleeing with the masses to safer areas near the Turkish border. A new wave of civilian displacement began. He gradually found some happiness.īut then government troops began an assault on Idlib and the nonstop bombardment of Khan Sheikhoun returned. He decided to try and build a new life and a new home. Her hair is in curly pigtails and she is wearing a sleeveless yellow T-shirt with the words “Love” printed on it and a heart in the middle.Īl-Yousef said that after spending some time in Turkey for treatment after the gas attack, he then chose to return to Khan Sheikhoun, held by rebels. ![]() He sits on the floor and plays Lego with his 11-month-old daughter, whom he named Aya, after his first daughter. He stroked their hair and choked back tears, mumbling, “Say goodbye, baby, say goodbye.”Īl-Yousef keeps photos and videos of the attack’s aftermath on his phone that he flips through from time to time. In footage filmed by his cousin that was widely circulated later, al-Yousef, 29 years old at the time, is seen seated in the front seat of a van cradling his twins, holding them in each arm. They were among the 89 people who died from what experts have determined was an attack using sarin, an outlawed nerve toxin. He lost consciousness and woke up four hours later to be told that his twins and wife had died. He recalls how he ran to his brother’s house to find him and his family dead. The people he saw foaming at the mouth and nose. How he told his wife to take the twins to safety outside. How people started running out of their homes and onto the street, trying to help each other. It is a story he has told dozens of times, about how Khan Sheikhoun residents woke up at half-past six in the morning to the sound of explosions. The Syrian government and its Russian allies denied there was a chemical attack, while Syrian officials later said the air force bombed a rebel arsenal that had chemical weapons stored inside.įrom his tent in the displaced settlement near the Turkish border called “Mokhayyam al-Karamah,” Arabic for “Dignity Camp,” near the town of Atmeh, al-Yousef recalls that fateful day when he lost his twins, Aya and Ahmed, his wife Dalal and 16 other relatives. It marked the first western airstrikes on targets of Assad’s government since the start of the conflict in March 2011. Tomahawk missiles at the Shayrat Air Base in central Syria, saying the attack on Khan Sheikhoun was launched from the base. ![]() At the time, the United States, Britain and France pointed a finger at the Syrian government, saying their experts had found that nerve agents were used in the attack.
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