Fearing Corona, the displaced people of the Syrian north prefer their destroyed homes over the camps

Omar Youssef - Northern Syria

After three harsh months that Abdel Hamid Bakkour spent in the northern Syrian camps near the border with Turkey, the man decided to return to his destroyed home in the northern countryside of Aleppo, to escape the massive overcrowding in the camp, and he feared that his family would be infected with an epidemic of corona, after witnessing sterilization campaigns that Implemented by civil defense teams.

With the relative calm in the countryside of Aleppo and Idlib, and the intensity of the shelling diminishing after the signing of the ceasefire agreement last March, Bakur, 32, chose to sit in his house with a few residents who could not afford to live in tents, driven by the hope that the agreement would last forever. far.

Bakkour tells Al-Jazeera Net that the Deir Hassan camps in Idlib countryside lack the basic necessities of living, especially drinking water and electricity, and in two tents two or three families reside as a result of the displacement of the regime during the recent attack of the opposition on the opposition-held areas in Aleppo and Idlib.

The impossibility of isolation in the camps and
adds that the greatest motivation for his return is the fear of Corona disease, which is spreading in all countries of the world, pointing to the impossibility of social isolation in the camp without a sewage network.

Bakkour also notes that what drove him to leave the camp quickly to his destroyed Atarib town was crowding the water tanks in long lines, and the gatherings of children and the elderly.

Bakour believes that isolation in his home with a few people in the town is the best option, despite the destruction and the absence of life, and the fear of the bombing returning at any moment, saying that his return to his home is "the sweetest of the two things passed."

Although the Ministry of Health in the Syrian opposition government announced that the north of Syria was free of Corona casualties until this moment, and that it had taken several precautionary measures and examined dozens of suspects, the warnings by international organizations of a humanitarian catastrophe in the event of an epidemic in the camps raised concerns among the people.

Return challenges
According to the "Response Coordinators" team in Syria, 109,000 displaced people have returned to their homes during the past few weeks out of a million who have fled their villages and homes in northern Syria since November 2019, due to the impact of the military campaigns of the Syrian regime and its ally Russia.

The returnees to their homes in the countryside of Aleppo and Idlib in the opposition areas face many difficulties, most notably the dangers of bombing, the reconstruction of their destroyed homes in light of the high cost of building materials, and the provision of water and electricity, in addition to collecting daily food with the advent of the month of Ramadan.

Omar Haj Hussein, one of the recent returnees to his town in the countryside of Aleppo, confirms that the distance between the points of the Syrian regime forces and his home does not exceed 2 km only, indicating that the elements of the regime can be seen with the naked eye, which is a concern for him and the returnees that the regime forces may violate the armistice You attack or bomb at any point.

Haj Hussein describes the island's net scenes of destruction in the town as horrific, at a time when civil defense teams are striving to move debris and open roads and remove unexploded ordnance and unexploded ordnance that pose a major threat to civilians, he said.

Haj Hussein notes that electricity is not available at all in most homes due to the network’s bombardment and generator destruction, in addition to the high prices of foodstuffs and their unavailability due to the interruption of roads and the closure of crossings due to the occurrence of the Corona epidemic in the areas controlled by the Syrian regime.

The lives of the displaced people in the Syrian north appear extremely difficult, as they suffer between the triad of displacement on the one hand, living in destroyed homes and being bombarded again on the other hand, and the fear that the Corona virus will raid them in the absence of any of the necessities of life on the third side.