“Caught in the Crossfire”: Syrian Civil War Through Teen’s Eyes
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ALICE Martins/AFP/Getty Images(DAMASCUS, Syria) — The blood is still sticky on the ground, evidence of the sniper in the mosque, Abdullah says.
The camera zooms into the nearby mosque before a single shot rings out.
“I told you the sniper would shoot at us,” a voice says off camera. The camera lens is thrust towards the ground, still rolling.
Like so many children in Syria, Abdullah has grown up too quickly. He’s seen things no 13-year-old should ever have to see.
Following the sniper’s shot, Abdullah turns the camera on his friend. “How do you get home?” he asks, “Running or walking?”
“Running, of course,” his friend responds. “Did you hear that sniper shoot?”
Before Syria’s civil war, Abdullah, was in sixth grade. But as soon as demonstrations in his home Aleppo Province kicked off, he dropped out of school. Donning a hood at first for disguise, he started showing up at protests in Bustan Al-Qaser, in Aleppo Province.
He soon ditched the hood and began organizing protests, singing songs and leading chants.
Abdullah tells ABC News he has escaped two kidnapping attempts and recalls when security forces stormed the house he lives in with his three older brothers and parents.
Abdullah is determined to capture on film what it’s like to grow up in Syria right now.
With the permission of his parents, ABC News gave Abdullah a camera to document daily life in Aleppo. He’s one of six Syrians filming inside Syria for the ABC News multi-platform series Caught in the Crossfire.
In the coming weeks and months, we’ll get to know these individuals and witness war through their eyes as they struggle to survive.
While the international community debates military intervention, the war rages on inside Syria. More than four million people have been internally displaced and more than two million refugees have fled, half of those children like Abdullah.
“No one is there to rescue us,” Abdullah says, turning the camera on himself. “The Arabs and everyone are silent. There is only God.”
Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio