The Bloody Eid

For the consecutive third year, Eid comes carrying with it the nightmare of blood and destruction to the people of Homs. Every holiday, Homsi people look forward to peace and security, but the birds of evil and darkness refuses but to turn their festival to tragedies. They do not give them the opportunity to visit the old tombs of their children, yet they insist to make them dig more graves for their new martyrs.

 The sinister hand of treachery, refuses but to kill the kids and the old alike. They murder innocent people in their homes, in the streets and in their workplaces. This time the massacre was the most hideous and brutal because the Takfiri terrorist attack was directed to innocent school children.

 No justification could be driven to attack children schools and kill any innocent child, especially that everyone knows that these schools cannot be either a military center or a vital target for the regime they are fighting. Here, there is only innocent children who come to learn.

 Hence the only purpose of this coward act is but to kill the future and to prevent those children from having knowledge and education that can enlighten their minds to build their home which was destroyed by those brutes.

The ground, the road, the sidewalk and walls of Ekrema Al-Makhzomi school and Ekrema Al-Mohdatheh school in Ekrema quarter were stained by the blood of these children. Their bags, books and notebooks scattered everywhere.

 No word can describe this painful tragedy. Death overhanging the place and the bitter astonishment was drawn on the faces and eyes of everyone.

Every family in Ekrema district has got the honor for the martyrdom of his or her child.

Many families have lost a kid or several kids and everyone asks what is our sin? And how long we will suffer from those assassins?

Nisreen Ahmad, a school teacher was killed with her two children in that coward crime, her neighbor told me, stressing that killing innocent civilians and children is unjustified crime.

Abu Ahmad said to me: “while I was in my work, my wife phoned me and told me that an explosion has just occurred near the school of our children and she will go in order to bring the kids home. Before I asked her to stay at home she closed the telephone handset heading to the school .”

 He stopped for a while trying to control his trembling hands.. “I rushed to know what happened, but my shock was severe when I knew that my wife with my three children and my nephew had died in the bombing”, he concluded wiping a bitter tear dropping on his tired face.

A young man who was helping in removing the rubble caused by the blast, told me that the explosion was so terrible. It has claimed the lives of a lot of innocent children. He said: “Every family has lost a dear. My neighbor who is a dentist has lost his little daughter in this explosion which is not the first against innocent children but we hope it will be the last and Syria, our beloved home, will soon triumph over its enemies”.

 Amal Farhat – Homs correspondent