Urgent – the day of the Great Escape … Hmeimim Base is the refuge of thousands of Syrians

On Sunday, the transitional authorities sent buses to transport the displaced from the Russian Hmeimim base, but the fugitives since Friday, March 7, due to the massacres that occurred, refused to leave and insisted on the request for protection, which indicates the possibility of the issue of these people to a hot focus that may have a reflection on the Syrian file in one way or another, especially with the ambiguity of the Russian position or an attempt to distort it in the media.

In the Hmeimim base, there are approximately 13,000 Syrian displaced people, all of whom fled from the village belt surrounding the base, within a circle of up to 20 km.

Informed sources told Al -Nahar that the civil division of the airport includes approximately nine thousand displaced people, and when its area was narrowed by the numbers of the displaced, the Russian airport administration decided on Sunday to open the military section to receive nearly four thousand displaced people. The sources confirmed that “the military section is isolated, of course, from the civil section, which in some cases led to the dispersal of one family between the two sections.”

The displaced people at the Hmeimim base are subject to a media campaign that sometimes shows them as from the remnants of the former regime, and sometimes traitors demand external interference. The campaigns do not stop at a certain limit, even if it is necessary to accuse women who have lost their children in the massacre of their symptoms. Following these methods reflects the extent of Damascus’s sense that the file of the displaced people at the base is harmful to the media and perhaps politically, so she tries everything she has to close it, and she is not tired of sending delegates to the base daily to persuade the displaced to return but to no avail.

The story of the big escape
Displaced people told Al -Nahar the story of their escape on the day of the massacres that occurred in their areas after the factions spread to respond to what was described as a coup against the transitional authorities.
“We heard the name of Ghayath Dala and that he would liberate the coast, but we did not see anything with our own eyes. We were isolated between the walls of the house, and fear had dominated us,” said an Arabic language teacher who was able to escape from the massacre that fell in his village in the northern countryside of Latakia. He added: “The hours of the night have passed so quiet, and our fears were getting more for fear that this calm preceded the storm, which is what happened, and any storm!”

Suddenly, chaos in the countryside of Latakia, Jableh and some of the countryside of Tartous, especially in the city of Baniyas and its countryside. Citizens told “Al -Nahar” the details of those frightening hours of Friday morning, “as if they were a reafra on what will happen on the Day of Resurrection. The witnesses not only asked to hide their names, but also asked to hide the names of the villages they belong to because of their fear of taking revenge on them.
“People were men, women and children wandering on their faces in the agricultural roads and lands, running away and they did not know what they flee, running and do not know where.” A woman told Al -Nahar as she recalls the moments of her flight in that fateful morning: “Since we heard that they (the factions) have arrived in the Qirdaha Bridge we felt dangerous to our lives, and we started the journey to escape to the unknown.”
Do not mention the witness who was the first to mention the Hmeimim base in front of the two fibers so that the course of their escape would change automatically, and to start walking through thorny agricultural roads towards the base.

“We walked approximately 15 km, and among us were children or purposes, which are bags and bags. Some seem to have expected to leave his home.”
However, the road to escape despite its winding and thorny path through high mountainous terrain was not safe.
“I flew on us drones, and began to bomb us.” He assured “Al -Nahar” more than one who saw those who saw the marches with their eyes. They also confirmed the fall of several shells in the vicinity of the roads they were crossing, stressing that “the factions did not want them to reach the airport (Al Qaeda).”
One of the witnesses said: “When we were approaching some asphalt roads, we used to see the bodies suspicious and the cars were burned as a result of the bombing, and some cars were injured.”
A number of these confirmed their vision, “rocket -propelled grenades that depart from the airport and drop a number of marches that were flying over them and bombing them.” This gave them the hope that the Russians will protect them, which encouraged them to walk despite fatigue and fear.

The Russians are strongly sympathetic
On the first day, a Russian officer apologized to the crowd because the base was not equipped to receive these huge numbers, and the congestion and chaos were the master of the situation. But after two days (Sunday), charging planes began to reach the airport, as witnessed to “Al -Nahar” witnesses from inside the base. The planes were carrying many of the supplies of displaced people, such as blankets, covers, canned foodstuffs, milk, diapers, and others. Things began to improve in terms of living.

Communication was difficult due to the different languages. Although there was a translator, he was not able to cover the requests of thousands of displaced. To overcome this obstacle, they carried a translation application, so they were writing in Arabic, so the application converts their writing to the Russian language to understand the Russian soldiers, so that communication became better.

Nevertheless, the residence was not comfortable due to the massive crowding and the lack of privacy, and the lack of sufficiency of the airport facilities to serve all of these, but this did not affect the resolve of the displaced in terms of their insistence on staying, because each of them had lost a person from his family or his house was burned, and fear prevented them from just thinking about leaving the rule, and that eliminating the first days and hearing the displaced to the stories of each other Increased concerns. What encouraged them more to stay is that Russian officers expressed a great hospitality with them, and they did not show any sign of complaining or resentment.

“The Russians were sympathetic to us,” says a witness who was among the first to arrive at the airport, so that “when we prepared our first demonstration to demand Russian protection, they asked us to demand international protection, and they were the ones who wrote to us the banners in this regard in the Russian language.”
“We heard during our presence here by contacting our knowledge in the villages that the factions planted the area with barriers to prevent people from reaching the Hmeimim base.” And more than one witness confirmed to “Al -Nahar” that “people do not think about leaving, but rather want protection, because it is no longer confident in the” Headquarters for the Liberation of Al -Sham “or any other faction.

One of them said: “Three days ago, we have seen Russian military planes landing every day twice in the military part of the airport,” indicating that Russia has started interacting with the issue in a serious way, “and he inspired through his words that there are great dimensions of their cause, and that Russia will employ it politically in its favor.
He added: “A Russian soldier was coming down from every plane riding in Pullman and heading to the airport building,” noting that this scene gave them great hope that the Russians would not abandon them, and that they were thinking about a way to find a solution to their problem, but he was not able to predict the nature of what he was talking about and hoped for.