The new death threat in Aleppo comes from the sky in the shape of barrels full of TNT. They are launched from helicopters of the regime and they can reduce a building of five floors to rubble and dust. These “home-made bombs” are cheaper than a missile or a conventional rocket but their destructive power is much higher.
One day Al-Assad’s Army destroyed a whole block with a Scud missile in the neighborhood of Ard Al-Hamra killing a lot of people trapped under rubble because there wasn’t any specialized rescue team. That day The Civil Defense Units were created with the aim of being the first ones to arrive and save as many lives as possible. Since then 135 people work in shifts of 24 hours 7 days a week in five different places inside the city of Aleppo.
Equipments are given by a British NGO but they are not enough, sometimes it took them more than one week to recover all the bodies under the rubble because it is something almost impossible to do with the tools they have. The dramatic situation in Aleppo remains silenced. There is no interest in telling what happens here, Syria is not trendy.
