AMMAR AL-SELMO no longer bothers to identify the dead bodies he pulls from the rubble of Aleppo City. There are simply too many. The dead are given numbers rather than names, and buried in trenches in the city’s parks; often 10 to a grave.
Sometimes, as he searches for survivors amid the twisted metal and concrete slabs of buildings destroyed by air strikes, Mr Selmo finds the severed hand of a child. At night, he wonders who the hands belonged to; which family lost their son or daughter that day.
“The worst part of my job is watching people die in the ambulances,” the 32-year-old says. “They just hold me. They clutch onto me. It is their last breath and they grab me by the hair or by the shirt as if doing this will save them from death.”
A teacher before the war, Mr Selmo is now the head of Syria’s civil-defence unit in the rebel-held half of Aleppo. His team of volunteers is the first to respond when bombs flatten buildings, rushing into the thick clouds of fine white dust to dig through the rubble for survivors.
Operating across rebel-held parts of the country, Syria’s civil-defence team has grown from small,...Continue reading
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