'We Lost Count': Local Doctor Speaks Out on Bombings in Syria
WESLACO – Nearly 400 dead and hundreds more wounded in Syria this week alone as the fight for power continues.
On Wednesday, Sweden and Kuwait called for a vote on a United Nations resolution ordering a 30-day cease-fire in Syria.
They want to enable the delivery of humanitarian aid to millions in need and the evacuation of the critically sick and wounded.
A Rio Grande Valley doctor who is from Syria frequents the country providing that much-needed aid.
Dr. Monzer Yazji hasn’t been to the area of Damascus that is currently under siege but knows the battle all too well.
The battle in Syria spans more than seven years. It's both a civil war and one where other countries have intervened; a war of power, freedom and uprising. The current crisis continues escalating as women, children, elderly, victims are killed.
Bombardment continues raining down on hospitals, homes and other civilian sites killing and wounding hundreds in Syria.
Doctors in Syria’s rebel-controlled suburbs of Damascus were unable to keep up with the staggering number of casualties this week.
The U.N. human rights office said at least 346 people were killed in East Ghouta since the Syrian government and its allies stepped up their attacks early February.
At least 92 people died in a 13-hour span Monday. Nearly a thousand more were wounded and even the medical facilities are being attacked.
“They really tried to stop us from doing our work. This is trying to stop us. They direct into the infrastructure of the society, medical relief, schools, everything to tell the people there you have no services, therefore get out or give up,” said Dr. Yazji.
Dr. Yazji travels regularly to Syria from the Valley. His group provides medical relief. Doctors on the ground in Eastern Ghouta are trying to save lives while risking their own.
The area is the bullseye of missile strikes. One of the directors on the ground, Abdul Rahman Ismail, was killed Tuesday.
“We were talking to him just four minutes before he got killed. And he was saving lives and we were telling him, be careful. You know don't get out, stay there. And he said we can't have to do it,” recalled the doctor.
In the last message Rahman sent, he said, "I am right in an area with a safe shelter and there is a hospital, but truthfully speaking it is absolutely terrible, airstrikes and barrels dropping like crazy, we don't even have time to count them, or whether we should count them or to just run away."
During the reports of the attacks and death of his colleague, Dr. Yazji says he found peace by thinking of victims in Syria he’s saved and can save when he returns to the country. He stays connected to doctors and medical staff on the ground there through social media.
He questions how to help in this moment when the death toll continues to mount.