Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has apparently forgotten the impact of the April 2017 U.S. air strike of 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles fired at the Shayrat Military Air Base in response to his use of chemical weapons against his own people, against international mandates.
National Security Council officials told reporters that night the missiles were specifically aimed to avoid hitting the storage tanks where the chemicals were being held, in order to minimize the danger of releasing any more of the sarin nerve gas. Rather, the missiles were aimed at the airfield and runways and other targets in order to “prevent and deter the use of deadly chemical weapons.”
But it seems the Syrian president hasn’t taken the lesson to heart — or maybe his memory is short.
Some 1,100 people – mostly civilians – have died in the past three weeks of ceaseless shelling in eastern Ghouta — the region next to the eastern border of Damascus — according to Médecins sans Frontières. The organization receives its statistics from the hospitals in the area which it supports. The killing and the shelling is taking place despite the so-called 30-day immediate “cease-fire” that was to have taken place under a United Nations Security Council resolution.
Threats by Western powers they would intervene if use of chemical weapons were discovered have been shown to be the toothless UN statements that have marked the past eight years of this savage civil war the UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, rightly described as “hell on earth.”
But now a teenager is speaking up.
Just last week, 15-year-old Syrian teen journalist Muhammad Najem tweeted another of his reports, this one documenting personally the use of chlorine gas and barrel bombs. “They try all ways to buried us alive in cellars,” he wrote on Twitter.
The situation in Eastern Gouta is disastrous
We talk about every thing happened
Bashar Al-assad and potin kill people in Gouta With all weapons
Yesterday is a day unbelivable
chlorine and indeterminate drums, Rockets
They try all ways to buried us alive in cellars pic.twitter.com/vXIC2BxTCV— muhammad najem (@muhammadnajem20)
Barely a day earlier, Najem had brought his friend Salim to the camera to tell about what happened to him when his house was bombed: Salim was wounded — his little sister Raghad, age nine, was killed — “with that dreaded rocket that the Russian planes received on us…”
In a prior tweet, Najem had expressed his relief that his friend had escaped with his life. “My friend Salim is fine after his injured because of air strikes on his house. He is wandering around his ruined house… I am so happy for your safety from death.”
Less than a week earlier, Najem gave viewers a quick tour of his neighborhood – or what once was a neighborhood, and now was a collection of targets and ruins.
It's my school which has become a target for Putin and Assad crimes
it's the Church of my city has becoming a target for Putin and Assad air planes
this is the Center of Syrian Arab Red Crescent in my city has becoming a target for terrorisme of Putin and Assad
pic.twitter.com/1K1XKsxaXt— muhammad najem (@muhammadnajem20)
Most 15-year-old boys are thinking of their next sandwich, or their next sports activity. Some are thinking of their next class or homework assignment. Najem thinks of how to survive until tomorrow, and how to make sure the message gets out to the world, to tell others about his family and his town.
Unfairly or not, Najem is a grown man before his time, thinking and worrying about the survival of family and friends – in the same way the Jews did in Europe during the Holocaust of World War II, and the same way the Jewish Palestinians did as they fought for the survival of the nascent State of Israel in 1948. He doesn’t mention his parents and his family status is unclear. One hopes he still has his parents, either or both.
There are more than six million internally displaced Syrians in the country, with nearly three million living under siege, if not more. Some families live in tents on the border with Israel. Millions more have fled the country altogether and live as refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq and Turkey.
At least 227 children and 154 children have been killed over the past 21 days in the battles in eastern Ghouta, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told Al Jazeera on Sunday (March 11). At least 4,378 others were wounded. Abdelmalik Aboud, an activist in Douma, said, “The shelling was focused on the underground shelters and mosques and the places people have tried to hide in.”
The attacks follow claims of another chemical weapons attack this weekend aimed at the nearby town of Arbin, which the Syrian Civil Defense known as the White Helmets, said was comprised of chlorine gas, phosphorus bombs and napalm.
SAMS Medical Worker: "People are dying on the streets." Today in : Napalm, phosphorus, cluster bombs, & now, chlorine. We are receiving reports of a chlorine attack carried out Hamouriyeh. & ambulances cannot reach the injured because of shelling.
— SAMS (@sams_usa)
A similar attack was carried out last Wednesday in the town of Hamouriyah – this one mentioned by Najem himself in one of the above tweets, and documented and substantiated by the Syrian-American Medical Society (SAMS).
Syria’s Deputy Foreign Minister, Faisal Mekdad, denied the reports Thursday during a news conference in Damascus, as the regime has done in the past.