{"id":29712,"date":"2019-01-18T22:23:56","date_gmt":"2019-01-18T22:23:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=29712"},"modified":"2019-01-18T22:23:56","modified_gmt":"2019-01-18T22:23:56","slug":"farmer-turns-ferryman-as-river-engulfs-syrian-hometown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=29712","title":{"rendered":"Farmer turns ferryman as river engulfs Syrian hometown"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\nMANBIJ: Charred walls, shattered windows, uncooked kebabs still on the counter \u2014 the blast that hit US forces at this small restaurant in northern Syria has left residents fearful for the future.<\/p>\n

\nWednesday\u2019s suicide bombing, claimed by Daesh, was the deadliest to hit US troops since they deployed to Syria in 2014.<\/p>\n

\nNineteen people, including four Americans, were killed in the attack on the grill house in the central market of the flashpoint northern town of Manbij.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cWe come to the market but we are afraid. We go to work and we are afraid… we don\u2019t know what could happen,\u201d says Jomaa Al-Qassem, eyeing the shops from his car along with his three-year-old son.<\/p>\n

\nIn front of the blackened storefront, armed security forces hustle curious onlookers away and are quick to prevent them from taking photos with their cellphones.<\/p>\n

\nBehind its twisted metal exterior, a clump of raw red meat lies abandoned on a counter, covered with dust. Tables and cookware from the kitchen have been twisted into a tangled mess on the floor.<\/p>\n

\nRun by a Washington-backed town council since the US-led coalition and its ground partners pushed out militants in 2016, Manbij has been a realm of relative quiet.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\nThe town was considered sufficiently secure that a group of top US military commanders and lawmakers strolled through the same market place without body armor during a tour of the area last summer.<\/p>\n

\nNext to the blast site, Abu Abdel Rahman lifts an armful of red teddy bears out of his storefront display, carefully avoiding the shattered glass.<\/p>\n

\nJust meters away from the restaurant, his shop was also hit by the blast.<\/p>\n

\nBut the US military presence in the town has been thrown into question after President Donald Trump\u2019s shock announcement last month that he would pull all American troops from Syria, claiming the Daesh had been \u201clargely defeated.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nSen. Lindsey Graham, a longtime Trump supporter who was among this summer\u2019s visitors, has been one of the most vocal critics of the president\u2019s decision and was in Ankara for talks with top officials on Friday.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cI was at the door of my shop and saw a fireball come out of the restaurant. Then, there were body parts on the ground,\u201d he told AFP, a red keffiyeh headscarf wrapped around his face to help fend off the cold winter air.<\/p>\n

\nThe four Americans killed in the blast were two soldiers, a civilian defense department employee and a Pentagon subcontractor.<\/p>\n

\nThe US Defense Department has previously reported only two American personnel killed in combat in Syria, in separate incidents.<\/p>\n

\nThe attack came as tensions between Washington\u2019s Syrian Kurdish ground partner and its NATO ally Turkey flare.<\/p>\n

\nAnkara views the Syrian Kurdish People\u2019s Protection Units (YPG) as a \u201cterrorist offshoot\u201d of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has waged a deadly insurgency for self-rule in southeastern Turkey since 1984.<\/p>\n

\nTurkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has threatened an all-out offensive to clear the group from its border.<\/p>\n

\nAt the town\u2019s entrance, security checkpoints manned by forces of the US-backed Manbij Military Council meticulously check vehicles and the IDs of people entering and exiting the town. Regular patrols move through the streets.<\/p>\n

\nBut for Malek Al-Hassan, it is not enough.<\/p>\n

\nThe 45-year-old was in the market that day to buy books for his children.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cWhen the explosion happened, I don\u2019t know how we managed to escape,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cWe hope the forces will be more vigilant at the roadblocks, and that they will work hard to prevent these infiltrators from committing these acts of sabotage,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\nAfter sweeping across swathes of Syria and Iraq in 2014, the militants\u2019 cross-border \u201ccaliphate\u201d has been erased by multiple offensives and is now confined to a tiny embattled enclave in eastern Syria close to the Iraqi border.<\/p>\n

\nBut despite the stinging defeats, Daesh has proved it is still capable of carrying out deadly attacks using hideouts in the sprawling desert or sleeper cells in the towns.<\/p>\n

\nOne day after the blast, Naassan Dandan\u2019s eyes well up with tears when he remembers the attack.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cI was outside when the explosion happened and was thrown to the ground,\u201d says the man in his 40s, still clearing shards of glass from his nearby photography studio.<\/p>\n

\nOn the walls of his shop, child portraits he has taken throughout his career are covered in black dust.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cI saw the bodies \u2014 the dead and the wounded,\u201d he says, as two young passers-by stop to lend a hand with the clean up.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MANBIJ: Charred walls, shattered windows, uncooked kebabs still on the counter \u2014 the blast that hit US forces at this small restaurant in northern Syria has left residents fearful for the future. Wednesday\u2019s suicide bombing, claimed by Daesh, was the deadliest to hit US troops since they deployed to Syria in 2014. Nineteen people, including…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":29713,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29712","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29712"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29712\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/29713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}