¡®Say Goodbye, Baby¡¯ Syrian Man Bids Farewell To Nine-Month-Old Twins Killed In Gas Attack

The grief-stricken father cradled his 9-month-old twins, Aya and Ahmed, each in the crook of an arm. Stroking their hair, he choked back tears, mumbling, ¡°Say goodbye, baby, say goodbye¡± to their lifeless bodies.

AP

Then Abdel Hameed Alyousef took them to a mass grave where 22 members of his family were being buried. Each branch of the clan got its own trench.

Another member of the family, Aya Fadl, recalled running from her house with her 20-month-old son in her arms, thinking she could find safety from the toxic gas in the street. Instead, the 25-year-old English teacher was confronted face to face with the horror of it: A pick-up truck piled with the bodies of the dead, including many of her own relatives and students.

AP

¡°Ammar, Aya, Mohammed, Ahmad, I love you my birds. Really they were like birds. Aunt Sana, Uncle Yasser, Abdul-Kareem, please hear me,¡± Fadl said, choking back tears as she recalled how she said farewell to her relatives in the pile.

¡°I saw them. They were dead. All are dead now.¡±

¡°My heart is broken. Everything was terrible. Everyone was crying and couldn¡¯t breathe,¡± Fadl told The Associated Press on Wednesday. ¡°We had many circumstances in Syria and we had many difficult situations. This is the most difficult and most harmful situation I ever had.¡±

Alaa Alyousef said his family was sleeping and woke to the sound of the impact only a few hundred yards (meters) away. The first thing they saw was smoke. His father went outside then rushed back in. He had seen a woman walking near the strike suddenly collapse. The family frantically closed windows and dampened cloths with water and apple vinegar to put over their faces.

AFP

They were lucky, the wind went in the other direction, Alyousef said.

The Alyousefs brought their dead to a family member¡¯s home that was outside the worst attack area. The courtyard was turned into a makeshift morgue where surviving relatives tried for hours to resuscitate loved ones already dead.

That¡¯s when Fadl finally collapsed, she said, only to wake up in a medical center.

While Fadl recovers along with her son at her parents¡¯ home in a town north of Khan Sheikoun, her husband is still looking for survivors from his extended family.

¡°We are still in shock, a big shock. Our family is devastated,¡± the 27-year-old said. ¡°Many are still missing. We are afraid to enter homes sometimes lest we find more people dead.¡±

On Tuesday, he and other family members buried the clan¡¯s dead in the mass grave.

On the way to the grave, Abdel Hameed Alyousef asked a cousin to video his farewell to his twin son and daughter as he sat in the front seat of a van being loaded with bodies.

When the airstrikes hit, he was with the twins. ¡°I carried them outside the house with their mother,¡± the 29-year-old shop owner told the AP. ¡°They were conscious at first, but 10 minutes later we could smell the odor.¡±

AP

The twins and his wife, Dalal Ahmed, fell sick.

He brought them to paramedics and, thinking they would be OK, went to look for the rest of his family. He found the bodies of two of his brothers, two nephews and a niece, as well as neighbours and friends. ¡°I couldn¡¯t save anyone. They¡¯re all dead now,¡± he said.

More than 80 people, including at least 30 children and 20 women, were killed in the chemical attack on the Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun early Tuesday, and the toll could still rise. The Alyousef family, one of the town¡¯s main clans, was hardest hit.