Syrian rebels in northern Syria have come under an intense week-long bombing campaign by Russian warplanes. The insurgents, who also have been trying to hold on in the face of a coordinated ground offensive by forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad, have sheltered in tunnels or taken cover in blast craters. One young rebel fighter told VOA about his ordeal and why he and many other fighters are withdrawing from the front.
For almost a quarter of his young life, 20-year-old Ahmad has been a fighter, but the fight has gone out of him. After enduring 400 airstrikes in four days in the villages of the northern countryside of Aleppo, where a devastating Syrian government offensive has been pressed, he withdrew from the frontline along with a hundred of his comrades.
He said morale has dropped to rock bottom and militia commanders are trying to boost the confidence of the fighters. There is talk of forming a new Aleppo army, uniting the more moderate, less religious-based militias aligned to the Western-backed Free Syrian Army.
When the warplanes paused their bombing runs, there were skirmishes with combatants clashing just meters from each other.
“The first day, the fight, it is easy. After that the second days and the third it was very difficult. We lost a lot of people, a lot of friends, a lot of fighters,” he said.