“Before the crisis, we struggled a bit with the necessities of life like electricity, water, and fuel, as there was constant shortage, but we always found a way. We worked hard to realize our dreams of getting educated, having jobs, and building families with the little resources we had.”

“But now we don’t even have the little hope we had a few years ago. The educational system is not as it used to be, many companies closed down and thousands of jobs were lost leaving a lot of families without a source of income. Government pensions have been cut off and civil servants have not received their salaries for over two years […] and due to the absence of water, we have to send our kids to fetch water from local mosques every day.”

“The apartment above ours was destroyed completely, my neighbor and his wife were still in it. There were no casualties, but his wife had a miscarriage from the scare.

The building on the other side of the street was cut in half by the explosion, a whole family died leaving behind a 12-year-old orphan girl. Pedestrians were lying dead on the streets and cars were burning.

Despite this I still live here, and we still get raided every now and then, but I can’t move away to a safer area because there are no jobs and I have no stable income. I hope this war gets resolved soon so we can start rebuilding our lives again.”