Bombings in Syria Force Wave of Civilians to Flee
The New York Times, Ben Hubbard
February 17, 2014

KILIS, Turkey — Hundreds of thousands of Syrian civilians have fled rebel-held parts of the city of Aleppo in recent weeks under heavy aerial bombardment by the Syrian government, emptying whole neighborhoods and creating what aid workers say is one of the largest refugee flows of the entire civil war.

The displaced, as many as 500,000 to date, the United Nations says, have flooded the countryside, swelling populations in war-battered communities that are already short on space and food and pushing a new wave of refugees into Turkey, where in interviews many have described a harrowing journey that left them in desperate condition, broke, hungry and, in many cases, sick or wounded.

Much of the human tide flowing out of northern Syria has crashed on this once-quiet border town, where Syrians now nearly outnumber the original 90,000 Turkish inhabitants.

Attacks on Aleppo have accelerated in recent weeks, as international talks aimed at ending the war have stalled and as the Obama administration has begun reviewing its Syria policy to find new ways to pressure the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

While the United States explores potential new strategies, analysts say, Mr. Assad is forging ahead with his own: pounding civilians out of rebel-held districts or using military means to make life miserable for those left inside.

The United Nations human rights agency warned last week of what it called “a pattern” of government attacks that violate the laws of war, but the strategy appears to be working for Mr. Assad, draining the power of rebels near Damascus and allowing his forces to advance near Aleppo.

Driving much of the exodus is the government’s heavy use of so-called barrel bombs, large containers filled with explosives and metal shards that explode on impact, maiming and killing people within a large radius, collapsing buildings and often leaving bodies buried in the rubble.

“A barrel came down on our neighbor’s house and mixed up the people with the bricks,” said Mustafa Toameh, 43, sitting on the floor of the bus station in this Turkish border town, where he had spent the previous two nights. Surrounding him were 10 members of his extended family he had smuggled out of Syria and a few grain sacks full of hastily gathered belongings.

“We don’t know anyone here, and if we had someplace to go, we would,” he said.

While Aleppo has taken the worst of it, Syrian helicopters have also dropped barrel bombs on Yabroud, an opposition town near Damascus, pushing thousands of refugees into Lebanon.

But the bulk of the new refugees are coming to Turkey, pressuring already strained medical and social services.

In recent weeks, emergency cases at the main hospital in Kilis have surged to between 20 and 30 per day, said Dr. Mehmet Beyazit, a supervising physician there. While some patients are rebel fighters wounded in clashes with Islamic extremists, the vast majority are civilians wounded by barrel bombs. After initial treatments, patients are transferred to clinics elsewhere in town that are dedicated to the war wounded.

On a recent afternoon, the doctors in one clinic grimaced as a 12-year-old boy who had lost a leg to a barrel bomb screamed while having the dressing changed on his stump.

“He was at the vegetable market when a barrel came down and took off his leg,” said the boy’s grandmother Fatima Abtini, making a slicing motion with her hand.

At the time, the family had been debating whether it had become too dangerous to remain in the city, she said.

“We kept saying, ‘We’ll go tomorrow’ and organizing ourselves, but then the barrel came and we rushed for the border,” she said.

Since no one had passports, the family paid smugglers to bring its members to Kilis, where they crowded into a small apartment with a rent they struggle to pay.

While the men looked for work, Ms. Abtini visited local charities to get whatever aid she could and tried to comfort her grandson, Ahmed, who kept asking about artificial limbs.

“Does it stay on all the time or does it come off?” Ahmed asked, frowning and gazing out the window near his hospital bed.

“I want one that doesn’t come off,” he said.

In a closed briefing last week, Valerie Amos, the United Nations aid coordinator, told the Security Council that 500,000 people were believed to have fled Aleppo in recent weeks and that twice that many could end up trapped in the city as the fighting advances.

In her remarks, obtained by The New York Times, she said that aid convoys were due to enter the area this week but that new fighting made those efforts “extremely precarious.”

Emile Hokayem, an analyst with the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said that displacing civilians allows Mr. Assad to put an enormous burden on rebels, neighboring countries and aid organizations. Destroying opposition neighborhoods also ensures that they will not pose a threat in the future.

“Assad seeks to take back important territory but not population,” Mr. Hokayem said. “He doesn’t need to maintain housing in place because the objective is not to allow residents back. It is a kind of cleansing going on.”

While the Syrian government has been using barrel bombs for months, it has stepped up their use on rebel-held districts in recent weeks, killing more than 450 people there so far this month, said Rami Abdul Rahman of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Most of those who have fled the city have remained inside Syria, overwhelming poor towns and sleeping in ratty tents with no access to electricity or running water.

“There are lots of families who have taken people in, but they have no way to feed them,” said Muhannad Najjar, an activist from a town north of Aleppo that has taken in thousands of refugees in recent weeks.

Since the start of the year, the United Nations refugee agency has reported more than 20,000 Syrians crossing into Turkey, with as many as 2,000 crossing per day. But the actual number could be much higher, since many Syrians lack passports and cross the border illegally, avoiding registration.

Many reach Kilis with no idea what to do next and congregate at the town’s bus station, just to get a roof over their heads and ask around about work or charity.

One refugee runs a business letting new arrivals use his cellphone, charging one Turkish lira, about 45 cents, for three calls. Some boys sell cookies from cardboard boxes, yelling out to passers-by, “Three items for a lira!”

Inside, large families camp out on benches or claim patches of floor, laying out blankets to sleep on and crowding next to radiators to fight the winter chill.

Sitting on the floor near his sleeping infant daughter, Yasser Baz, 32, described how he and his family had fled their apartment building days before it was hit with a barrel bomb.

“All that was left was a pile of bricks,” he said. His brother, his sister-in-law and their two children were all killed in the attack.

He borrowed $500 from a relative who commands a rebel brigade and used it to smuggle his family across the border. After a few stops elsewhere, they ended up in the bus station, with less than $10 remaining and no idea what to do next.

“Praise God that we are living in this five-star hotel,” he said.

Karam Shoumali contributed reporting from Kilis, Sebnem Arsu from Istanbul, and Somini Sengupta from the United Nations.

© 2014 The New York Times Company

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