Raqqa mothers recount horrors of life under IS as city liberated
The thousands of Syrians who fled Raqqa when it fell under the Islamic State’s control have gained an inch of hope to return to their homes after the city was recently liberated.
BEIRUT — For nearly three years, Raqqa, Syria’s sixth-largest city, served as a slaughterhouse for the Islamic State (IS). Today, Raqqa is an emancipated wreckage. It was liberated Oct. 17 by a US-backed alliance of mainly Kurdish-Syrian fighters. IS forces are now physically defeated, but their shadow continues to darken the lives of those who will forever remember the apocalyptic horror, savagery and bloodbath.
Foza, who refused to reveal her last name, is a 36-year-old mother who escaped Raqqa at night and is now among the thousands of Syrian refugees living in Lebanon. “I put my 3-year-old daughter on my shoulders and my 12-year-old son put his younger brother on his back and we crawled over dead bodies in our neighborhood to escape the militants,” she said.
“When we reached Lebanon’s border, the children could not breathe and could not stop vomiting,” added Foza, who escaped IS eight months ago. They walked, hitchhiked and at points hid in trucks that maneuvered through booby traps and land mines.
The trauma endured by Foza and her family is evident in her children’s nightly bed-wetting and nightmares. These are frequent challenges among many Syrian refugees who now live in Lebanon — a country of only 6 million in population that is now host to more than 1.1 million registered Syrians. According to local aid groups and grass-roots organizations, that number does not include the many thousands of unregistered refugees.
