Aleppo Residents Burn Furniture to Protect Children from Freezing in Winter

"Please don’t remind me of how I feel burning my furniture, which I struggled to buy as a result of my own sweat and hard work. When I spoke with my wife about burning our bedroom set, she cried and told me to do whatever I felt was best, since the safety of the children is more important than anything. We started burning it and we slept on the ground. After one week the whole room was empty. Now I’m burning the living room furniture like I mentioned earlier. After a while it will also be gone and I will have to find other things to burn.Most people left their homes because of the heavy shelling. The Hanano residences are considered one of the most-shelled areas in Aleppo, and they are still being shelled by the regime’s air force, and that’s because they close to the front line. There are only a few hundred families left, yet there used to be over 40,000 families.This war left has no one unharmed. Everybody has lost. We hoped the world would pay attention to us and see the massacres we’ve been suffering for four years. We asked for freedom and dignity. We deserve them and we will fight for them in spite of all the martial complications, and all the armed groups, such as those enemies of the Syrian people, Daesh [ISIS]. We are the owners of the land and we will triumph.I think it must be a military solution and not political at all, because he who kills people in prisons and starves them and burns them alive cannot be faced with humanity, and surely not with a political solution The answer must be the union of the rebels under one flag, and by aiming our guns at the government. Everything else is a waste of time.Before the revolution I was considering improving my business to give my children a better future, and everything was going well, but the non-stop war forced me to leave my job and work as a taxi driver. I feel sad when I see the children, and not just my children. They don’t play and they don’t go to schools. It hurts me when one of my kids asks me to buy him a toy and I don’t have the money to buy it. This is one of the hardest things I’ve ever faced. It’s weird, this feeling I get when a helicopter is flying above our house and my family is panicking, and we try to comfort ourselves by praying to God to keep it away from us."