Manbij, Syria (North Press) – Alif al-Obeid, 70, from the village of al-Bweir, north of Manbij in Aleppo eastern countryside, is struggling alone for living after her son, who was the only breadwinner to the family, was killed by ISIS in 2016.
The ISIS slaughtered al-Obeid’s son in front of her then 8-year-old grandson. As a result of seeing the killing of his father, the boy paralyzed. The grandmother sat idly by after looking for a treatment for her grandson everywhere to relieve his constant pain, “but to no avail.”, as she described.
On July 17, 2016, ISIS committed a horrifying massacre against the villagers. Its members opened fire on any one they saw; among the victims were a 7-month-old infant and one-year-old child in addition to 10 IDPs of one family who were taking shelter in the village’s school.
That day, ISIS killed 36 innocent civilians including men women, and children, in addition to wounding six people.
Al-Bweir village lies in Manbij northern countryside, 13 km away from the city center with a population that reaches up to 200 families, descended from an Arab clan called al-Kharaj. They work in agriculture and livestock.
Since the massacre, al-Obeid’s daughter-in-law got sick with unidentified disease where every two days she has an epilepsy seizure and taken to the hospital for her treatment without any assistive device or aid, according to the grandmother.
The 70-year-old grandmother told North Press that she could not forget the scene of the killing of her only son and those who were with him at the entrance to the house, saying, “The ground was filled with their blood, I was standing around them, not knowing what to do, and there was no one to help me bury them, I could not cry at that time.”
The families of the victims live, despite years of the massacre, the pain of losing their loved ones, and by the July 17 of each year, the survivors of the massacre go to the cemetery that contains the remains of their victims.
In 2014, ISIS took over the city and gets the armed opposition factions (Free Syrian Army-FSA at the time) out of it.
The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) supported by the US-led Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS liberated Manbij from ISIS in 2016 following fierce battles.
At that time, ISIS used the residents of Manbij and its countryside as human shields in the battle with the SDF, according to the residents.
Mustafa al-Mousa, 60, from al-Bweir, and a father of a family of 13, could not forget the day of the massacre.
The 60-year-old man remembers what happened, as ISIS militants infiltrated the village and started shooting the residents under the pretext that they were “apostates”.
ISIS, then, killed the 23-year-old son of al-Mousa and shot his granddaughter, who opposed the killing of her uncle “without any mistake”, which led to her being wounded in the shoulder.
In addition to his eldest son, al-Mousa lost his brother, two of his sons, four of his cousins, and three of their wives.
“They deprived me of rejoicing my eldest son, to see him a groom. These people [ISIS] do not know Islam, they take it as a shield to kill and sabotage,” the grieving father said.