{"id":30690,"date":"2019-01-26T15:23:57","date_gmt":"2019-01-26T15:23:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=30690"},"modified":"2019-01-26T15:23:57","modified_gmt":"2019-01-26T15:23:57","slug":"families-flee-bombardment-and-hunger-in-last-syria-daesh-pocket","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=30690","title":{"rendered":"Families flee bombardment and hunger in last Syria Daesh pocket"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\nAs US-backed forces advanced, 22-year-old Dima Qatran buried one of her twin babies, then picked up the other and fled the Daesh group\u2019s crumbling pocket in eastern Syria.
Clutching her remaining 11-month-old daughter, she joined hundreds escaping the last shreds of the extremist group\u2019s \u201ccaliphate\u201d near the Iraqi border.
She fled through the cold desert on foot toward territory held by US-backed fighters, where she boarded a truck to take her to a camp for displaced Daesh families further north.
\u201cI had twins,\u201d Qatran told AFP on Friday, tears streaming down her face, at a pit stop along the way.
\u201cI buried one, and the second is dying. She has diarrhea and keeps vomiting. I can\u2019t bear it. My daughter died of cold and hunger.\u201d
The US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces are fighting to expel the last Daesh fighters from a few hamlets in the eastern province of Deir Ezzor.
\u201cWe slept in the street for 11 days after my home was bombed\u201d in Baghouz, a village on the front line, she said.
Qatran said she arrived in Baghouz with her husband\u2019s family a year ago after fleeing the town of Albukamal to the west, which was retaken from Daesh by Russia-backed regime forces in late 2017.
The young mother said all she wanted was to be reunited with her husband who works as a cook in Turkey, and claimed to have no affiliation with Daesh.
\u201cI\u2019m scared of them,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\nRavaged by Rashes<\/strong><\/p>\n

\nNear the Omar oil field, women and children \u2014 some of whom had faces ravaged by rashes \u2014 descended from the back of a dozen small trucks, caked in dust and visibly exhausted as the SDF allowed a quick break.
A mother dashed down from a vehicle, rushing her two children out of sight to relieve their bladders, while others pleaded for food and drink, saying that with the bombardment and siege, they had not eaten for days.
Infants screamed while their mothers did their best to soothe them.
For days, hundreds have been fleeing what remains of the so-called \u201cHajjin pocket\u201d east of the Euphrates River, SDF officials said.
According to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor more than 8,000 people have fled since Monday, including around 1,000 jihadists.
Since early December, some 29,000 people have escaped the fighting, the Observatory said.
Sara Al-Sahar, 32, paced around with her baby trying in vain to pacify him.
He\u2019s \u201chungry and sick,\u201d said the mother of two.
\u201cThere\u2019s no food over there, just hunger,\u201d she said of areas under Daesh control.
\u201cNothing \u2014 not even nappies.\u201d
Sahar also insisted she had nothing to do with Daesh, a claim that AFP could not immediately verify.
\u201cWe walked for six hours\u201d in the desert before reaching SDF-controlled territory, she said.<\/p>\n

\nSuspicion<\/strong><\/p>\n

\nAround 750 people reached SDF-held territory from Daesh-held territory on Friday, Mohammed Suleiman Othman, an official with the Syria Democratic Council said.
They included 600 civilians, mostly Iraqis related to Daesh fighters, he said.
But 150 men were detained on suspicion of belonging to Daesh, after screening near the frontline.
Fourteen women and their children of various nationalities including from Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Turkey were ferried off to a special center for questioning.
Inside that center, women sat with their children in a large room. One was changing her baby, with a nappy improvised from fabric and plastic bags.
In a corner, 20-year-old Mariam from Ukraine fed her baby before she wiped her face with her hands.
\u201cI need to rest before I can remember what happened to me,\u201d she said, speaking in classical Arabic, reluctant to answer any questions.
Near the Omar oil field, women asked how much longer before they reach the Al-Hol camp in the northeastern province of Hasakah.
\u201cIs it still far? We\u2019re so tired,\u201d one of them said.
Tayyeba, 54, said she escaped with her husband, but the SDF detained him for questioning.
\u201cWe fled as the frontlines started getting closer,\u201d she said, wrinkles visible under her black face veil.
Umm Baraa, 20, said: \u201cThe streets are full of people who can\u2019t find anywhere to sleep. We were running from one neighborhood to another.\u201d
She said her husband \u2014 an Daesh fighter \u2014 died recently in an air strike.
\u201cWe were all doing so well… If the frontline hadn\u2019t got closer, we wouldn\u2019t have left at all,\u201d she said of life under Daesh.
\u201cNow we don\u2019t know what awaits us.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As US-backed forces advanced, 22-year-old Dima Qatran buried one of her twin babies, then picked up the other and fled the Daesh group\u2019s crumbling pocket in eastern Syria.Clutching her remaining 11-month-old daughter, she joined hundreds escaping the last shreds of the extremist group\u2019s \u201ccaliphate\u201d near the Iraqi border.She fled through the cold desert on foot…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":30691,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30690","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\/30690","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=30690"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30690\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/30691"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}