Woman from Syria’s Manbij narrates how ISIS killed her family members
Zakiyyah al-Obeid whose family members were killed by ISIS in Manbij
MANBIJ, Syria (North Press) – Zakiyyah al-Obeid, 60, a woman from the city of Manbij in Aleppo eastern countryside, northern Syria, uncovered how ISIS militants killed her husband and two sons during the terrorist organization’s control of the city.
It is very difficult for her to forget the tragic event happened to her six years ago, a day she described as “black” due to the killing of her husband and two sons in front of her eyes.
Although the massacre followed by happy days when women took the black scarves off their faces after liberating the area from the hands of ISIS, but yet, the terrifying details roam her mind every single day.
Although her words did not serve the real meaning behind her indescribable facial expressions, the 60-year-old lady looked holding on while she was spreading the details of what happened with her, especially that the event of losing her husband and two children is so tragic to be told.
The massacre took place at the beginning of June 2016, after a short time of the military operations launched by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) with the support of the US-led Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS, which aimed to expulse ISIS from the area.
The operation ended with the liberation of Manbij and its countryside on August 15, 2016, by the SDF and Global Coalition after fierce battles lasted for two months and a half.
In one of summer mornings of 2016, said al-Obeid, ISIS members raided her house in Bweir, a village which is located 13 km north of the city, with a population of 200 families most of them descend from an Arab clan called al-Kharraj.
“They Killed Hassan and Ayman”
“My husband was standing in the yard of the house when ISIS militants raided. We were in the house,” al-Obeid said, adding, they asked the keys of the parked car and ran out after they shot the 55-year-old husband to death.
After they killed the husband, they entered the room looking for other men to find the two brothers, Hassan and Ayman, al-Obied’s sons, and shot them both down, before they leave the place.
While she was weeping over her dead husband’s body, one of her daughters screamed “They killed my brothers Hassan and Ayman too.”
During these miserable dark minutes that seemed like hours, and when the mother realized that she has lost her beloved ones forever, she started to worry about the girls in the house to be victims of rape, kidnapping and assassination by the ISIS members.
It was not a good idea for them to stay weeping over the dead bodies, but they should save the living ones, therefore, the mother, her sister-wife, their daughters, and their daughters-in-law started to think of a way they could survive the situation.
Same as every female in villages, the girls decided to flee the villages to a far place, and the mother and her sister-wife stayed behind where they dowsed the bed sheets and covered the dead bodies in order not to decay due to the high temperatures, until they come back to bury them.
29 bodies of killed women and children
Zakiyyah al-Obeid and her sister-wife left the house leaving the village under a hail of bullets fired by ISIS members who centered on a nearby hill targeting the running civilians.
She pointed out that she was able to reunite with her daughters and daughters-in-law in a house near the village which turned, later on, to a fight scene between ISIS members and SDF fighters.
During her short stay in the neighboring village, the names of the victims who died at the hands of ISIS were widely cited. At that time, the old woman realized that she was not the only one who lost her beloved ones, but rather most of the villagers lost their children at the hands of ISIS, and that what happened was a mass massacre. It was carried out by ISIS members against the residents of the area.
29 bodies of dead women and children were found in mass graves discovered through the past few years, most recently in late July. The mass graves contained the dead bodies of people who were killed by ISIS, according to what the Civil Administration in Manbij.
On that day in the summer of 2016, the families of the victims waited until night fell to bury the bodies of their loved ones, knowing that they had to bury the bodies in mass graves due to the difficulty of digging individual graves due to the exceptional circumstances.