AL-BAB, Syria: After washing up her family’s dishes over a plastic basin, 11-year-old Cedra sits on the floor of the dank basement in Syria to tackle her day’s studies.
A dark staircase leads from a street in the town of Al-Bab to the gloomy space the young girl, her blind father and some 40 other families have the misfortune of calling home.
“There’s a single room which we use as a kitchen, a bathroom and a bedroom,” said Cedra.
She scribbled in her notepad, while crouched against a wall of bare cinder blocks and under a line of laundry trying to dry in the humid cellar.
The residents of this underground camp were displaced by the Syrian war, sometimes several times, mostly from the eastern province of Deir Ezzor.
Cedra’s family fled the city of Deir Ezzor in 2012, in the early stages of Syria’s conflict.
They took refuge in Raqqa, further west, but the city soon became the Syrian capital of the Daesh group’s self-proclaimed “caliphate.”
The subsequent bombardment of Raqqa, which was almost completely levelled, killed her mother and brother.
The girl and her father fled once more and eventually found their way to Al-Bab, a rebel-controlled area near the border with Turkey.
Cedra does not go school because she needs to help her blind father, but one of the other adults living in the basement has organized classes for her and a few other children.
The war has set her back years in her education.
“I’m learning how to write the letters, it’s only been a few days,” said the girl, wearing a thick, red sweatshirt and a black headscarf.
Each morning, Cedra makes the bed, tidies the room, makes tea and prepares breakfast before studying.
Then it’s time to prepare lunch, after which she plays with the other children before getting to work on dinner.
Blankets are piled up near a flimsy foam mattress in one corner of the small room. A handful of cooking utensils and a plastic broom are tucked away nearby.
“Life in this basement is not easy,” said her father, Mohammed Ali Al-Hassan, who hopes to return to Deir Ezzor.
“There is nothing to do here and no money,” said the greying father, who used to sustain his family by selling fruit and vegetable from a street cart.
A resident of Al-Bab made his basement available to the displaced in mid-2017. The space is now divided in 42 tiny “studios,” one for each family.
Their food and other basic needs are provided for by local charities.
“The initial idea was to have a temporary shelter for people while they look for a housing solution,” said Abu Abdel Rahman, who was also displaced from Deir Ezzor and acts as a kind of supervisor.
The place soon filled up and few of the families ever moved out for lack of affordable options.
“The smallest possible accommodation involves a rent of 100 dollars. Those you see here are those who can’t pay that amount.
“Here, everyone is experiencing a disastrous situation,” said the 59-year-old, who used to work in a textile factory.
Kneeling in front of a white board, a woolly hat pulled tightly down on his head, Abu Omar forms the letters of the Arabic alphabet, which his pupils recite in unison.
He lost a hand and the bones in his left leg were smashed to pieces after an air strike hit his home in Deir Ezzor.
Abu Omar’s disabilities left him unable to work but he teaches 13 of the basement’s children.
He said that number has dropped steadily.
“Many of them just have to go out and work. Because of their social condition, many families have to interrupt their children’s education,” he explained.
Umm Ghassak’s childhood came to an abrupt end when the war erupted and now, at 23, she is already a widow.
Her husband died of injuries sustained two years ago during bombardment on Albu Kamal, a former IS stronghold on the border with Iraq.
“We didn’t have enough money to treat him,” she said.
The young woman and her four-year-old daughter are totally reliant on the assistance they receive. “If nobody helps us, we just don’t eat.”
Displaced huddle in a basement as winter grips Syria
Displaced huddle in a basement as winter grips Syria
- Some 40 families have found their way to Al-Bab after fleeing from their homes, a rebel-controlled area near the border with Turkey
- Their food and other basic needs are provided for by local charities
US, France, Germany, UK urge ‘de-escalation’ in Syria: joint statement
WASHINGTON: The United States and its allies France, Germany and Britain called Sunday for “de-escalation” in Syria and urged in a joint statement for the protection of civilians and infrastructure.
“The current escalation only underscores the urgent need for a Syrian-led political solution to the conflict, in line with UNSCR 2254,” read a statement issued by the US State Department, referencing the 2015 UN resolution that endorsed a peace process in Syria.
Britain ups Gaza aid ahead of donor conference
- Aid organizations accuse Israel of preventing trucks from entering Gaza in large enough numbers to alleviate a humanitarian crisis in the war-torn territory
LONDON: Britain will provide an additional 19 million pounds ($24 million) in humanitarian aid to Gaza, the international development minister said Monday, calling for Israel to give greater access ahead of a key conference on the conflict.
“Gazans are in desperate need of food, and shelter with the onset of winter,” the minister, Anneliese Dodds, said in a statement as she headed for a three-day visit to the region, including an international conference in Cairo Monday on the Gaza Strip’s aid needs.
“The Cairo conference will be an opportunity to get leading voices in one room and put forward real-world solutions to the humanitarian crisis,” she added.
“Israel must immediately act to ensure unimpeded aid access to Gaza.”
Aid organizations accuse Israel of preventing trucks from entering Gaza in large enough numbers to alleviate a humanitarian crisis in the war-torn territory.
The new UK funding will be split into 12 million pounds for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and the World Food Programme (WFP), and seven million pounds for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), the statement said.
UNRWA announced Sunday it had halted the delivery of aid through the key Kerem Shalom crossing between Israel and Gaza because of safety fears, saying the situation had become “impossible.”
Britain has committed to spending a total of 99 million pounds this year in humanitarian aid to the Palestinian territories, the government said.
After Dodds’s Cairo stop, the minister is to travel to the Palestinian territories and Israel.
Islamist militant group Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, 2023 resulted in the death of 1,207 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures, which includes hostages killed in captivity.
Israel responded with a military offensive that has killed at least 44,429 in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry that the UN considers reliable.
Airstrikes in northwestern Syria kill 25 people, says Syria’s White Helmets
- The Syria offensive began Wednesday, the same day a truce between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah came into effect
DAMASCUS: The Syrian rescue service known as the White Helmets said early on Monday on X that at least 25 people have been killed in northwestern Syria in airstrikes carried out by the Syrian government and Russia on Sunday.
In Blinken call, Turkiye backs moves to ease Syria tension
- The flareup has also seen pro-Turkish militants groups attacking both government forces and Kurdish YPG fighters in and around the northern Aleppo province over the weekend, a Syrian war monitor said
ISTANBUL: Turkiye’s top diplomat and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke Sunday about the “rapidly developing” conflict in Syria where militants have made gains.
Blinken and Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan discussed by telephone “the need for de-escalation and the protection of civilian lives and infrastructure in Aleppo and elsewhere,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said in a statement.
The call came after Syrian militants and their Turkish-backed allies launched their biggest offensive in years, seizing control of Syria’s second-largest city Aleppo from forces loyal to President Bashar Assad.
According to a Turkish foreign ministry source, Fidan told Blinken Ankara was “against any development that would increase instability in the region” and said Turkiye would “support moves to reduce the tension in Syria.”
He also said “the political process between the regime and the opposition should be finalized” to ensure peace in Syria while insisting that Ankara would “never allow terrorist activities against Turkiye nor against Syrian civilians.”
The flareup has also seen pro-Turkish militant groups attacking government forces and Kurdish People’s Defense Units (YPG) fighters in and around Aleppo, a Syrian war monitor said.
Turkiye sees the YPG as an offshoot of the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has led a decades-long insurgency against Ankara.
The Syria offensive began Wednesday, the same day a truce between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah came into effect.
More than 400 people have so far been killed in the offensive, most of them combatants, a Syrian war monitor said.
The State Department said the two also discussed “humanitarian efforts in Gaza and the need to bring the war to an end” as well as efforts to secure the release of Israeli hostages held by Hamas.
Fidan said Israel “should keep its promises in order for the Lebanon ceasefire to become permanent” and called for a ceasefire in Gaza “as soon as possible.”
The pair also discussed Ukraine and South Caucasus, the source said.
Russia says helping Syrian army ‘repel’ insurgents in three northern provinces
- Russia launched airstrikes on militant targets in Aleppo for the first time since 2016
MOSCOW: Russia on Sunday said it was helping the Syrian army “repel” armed insurgents in three northern provinces, as Moscow seeks to support the government led by its ally Bashar al-Assad.
An Islamist-dominated militant alliance launched an offensive against the Syrian government on Wednesday, with Syrian forces losing control of the city of Aleppo on Sunday, according to a war monitor.
“The Syrian Arab Army, with the assistance of the Russian Aerospace Forces, is continuing its operation to repel terrorist aggression in the provinces of Idlib, Hama and Aleppo,” the Russian military said in a briefing on its website.
“Over the past day, missile and bombing strikes were carried out on places where militants and equipment were gathered,” it said in the same briefing, without saying where or by whom.
It said at least “320 militants were destroyed.”
Russia announced earlier this week that it was bombing militant targets in the war-torn country, with Russian warplanes striking parts of Aleppo — Syria’s second city — for the first time since 2016, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Moscow is Syrian leader Assad’s most important military backer, having turned the tide of the civil war in his favor when it intervened in 2015.
