He takes out a bag from his pocket, He opens the bag, with anxiety, and begins to roll a cigarette, moistening it with his tongue, shaking his head, rejecting what happened or even regretting it.
When Khaled lighted his cigarette, his wife, who was cutting vegetables in preparation for lunch, interrupted him, saying,” Bring in your son so he does not hurt himself.”
Khaled al- Hewies, an IDP from the countryside of Hama, lives with his family of four children and his wife in the countryside of Kobani.
He moved to Kobani in search of the meadow for his sheep, the family lived in peace, where safety and pasture are available for their sheep.
Early in September, the children brought a piece of iron from a land where their sheep were grazing, thinking it was a piece of iron, but it was an unexploded remnant of war.
The land mine exploded, wounding the four children.
At that time, they learned that it was a mine left by war, but it was too late.
Al-Hewies, who lives in a hair tent, heads to his child wounded in the foot and places him in his lap, and his girl child, who sustains injuries in her arm, tried to have a place in her father’s lap to sit.
As for his two other children, they were sent to Raqqa, accompanied by their uncle, to receive treatment after they were seriously injured.
One of them had his leg and hand amputated, and the other had a hemorrhage with a broken leg and multiple injuries, and they are in “critical condition”.
People in Kobani and its countryside are perturbed by the war remnants that spread everywhere in agrarian lands. They demand specialized teams be sent to remove them at a time work by NGOs has been reduced immensely.
Land mines left by the Islamic State Organization (ISIS) during its invasion of Kobani still pose threats to the locals’ lives.
Though ISIS was expelled from Kobani early in 2015, the equipment it planted still claim the lives of locals and cause material damage to the people of Kobani and its countryside amid “disregard” by the concerned international organizations.
Statistics of a Human Rights Organization in the Euphrates region indicate that five children have been injured and one child lost his life due to mine explosions in the region since the beginning of 2022.
While the region recorded, in 2021, four injuries and five deaths of children in various villages and regions due to the explosion of remnants of war, according to the organization.
Al-Hewies began to think of leaving his place to treat his two children, but he is worried about the rest of his family and his sheep because it is his only source of livelihood.
Simultaneously, he can’t go further than Raqqa, and if it is necessary to travel to the areas held by the Syrian government, he won’t go for fear of being captured for compulsory military service or arrest.
While he was continuing, his wife Khalediya interrupted him, saying, “I will go with my sons, I don’t let them in this state.”
Khalediya al-Fahd, the mother of the children, said that she saw that piece of iron in the hands of her children, but she didn’t know that it was a mine due to her lack of knowledge on the issue, she had never seen mines before, and no one warned her of its danger.
She narrates the incident, with sad crying eyes, “I saw them playing with that piece and my oldest son was tying it with a string and waving it, suddenly I heard a sound.”
“I went to see what happened, I saw my children lying and swimming in their blood, I saw the bones of my son’s leg and hand with my own eyes, and it was a horrible scene,” she added.
That incident gravely harmed the family in light of their deteriorating economic conditions.
Al-Hewies family doesn’t want other families to experience such suffering, and they appeal to the organizations operating in the field of mines to remove them, especially since thousands of residents in Kobani are at risk of being hit with unexploded mines.
In light of the family’s demands, the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) in the Euphrates region says that it does not have cadres specialized in removing mines, and in turn, it called on international organizations and institutions to intervene and remove these remnants of war, without any response from the latter.
The deputy co-chair of the Euphrates region, Nihad Ahmad, confirms that there are “a lot of mines in the agricultural lands.”
Although it included the mines issue on its agendas and meetings with the US-led Global Coalition, the AANES received only promises, thus the latter demands the intervention of international organizations specialized in demining mines.
