Inside Syria: Broken families, human rights abuses, severely injured children

By Rodrigo Abd

AP cameraman Ahmed Bahaddou and I sneaked into Syria from Turkey, traveling with the rebels’ Free Syrian Army. Our aim was to understand and cover the conflict in the country’s northwest region, as well as in the hard-hit Homs neighborhood of Bab Amr, under siege for weeks by government forces.

Almost as soon as we arrived, news broke of a massacre and the military victory of Bashar Assad’s forces in Homs. But after traveling in the country for about 10 days it became clear that the rebel stronghold of Idlib was likely to be the next source of news.

Saturday, March 10, was a horrifying day in Idlib. Ahmed and I had slept the night before in a hospital for security. The city was completely dark, making it impossible to drive in the city, and the sounds of the fighting could be heard everywhere.

After waking up that morning, we began documenting the chaos as dozens of civilians and fighters brought the wounded and dead to the hospital. We could hear that the fighting was very close, with the sound of bullets whizzing nearby. Assad’s forces were taking control of all the neighborhoods and it was clear they were not going to welcome the presence of journalists.

It was time to leave.

In the last light of the evening, we saw fighters celebrating the destruction of a tank, and we ran with them, trying to avoid the direct line of fire. A sudden big explosion that spewed a huge grey smoke over a group of wounded soldiers created a terrific scene that I quickly photographed.

After we ran back to the hospital I encountered some of the most moving images of the conflict: a group of rebel fighters weeping over their dead comrades. They may not be my best photographs, but I think they tell a lot about the situation in Syria.

We left Idlib that night, traveling again with the Free Syrian Army. After walking in the dark in complete silence through a passage, we then hiked more than 11 kilometers to avoid military checkpoints in hopes of reaching a friendly city.

Anything we suffered to tell the story was nothing compared with what the Syrian people have experienced in nearly a year of conflict: broken families. Human rights abuses. Children severely injured. More than 7,500 people dead. The cruel realities of a country with a dark future.

Time