An activist in Douma communicating with BuzzFeed News over WhatsApp in both Arabic and English described the terrifying sight after the chemical attack.
"There is nothing I can say that can describe what happened," Abdullah Abo Humam told BuzzFeed News. Humam said he was about 800 meters from where the attack took place on Friday, and was only able to enter a building that was hit the following day.
"I saw someone at the entrance to the building. He told us that everyone inside the building was dead, and that his family was among them. He also told us that the chemical attack happened when he was outside the house, and he came back to find everyone dead," meanwhile Syrian forces were still dropping barrel bombs, Humam said. "He was just standing there, unalarmed by all the other bombs coming down around his house. His whole family were dead so he didn’t even move, he was just standing there, not afraid, just in shock. He could have been hit by a barrel bomb at any minute, but he just didn’t move."
When we came to the building we found the children, women and men who had died and had signs of suffocation. Humam could barely mov through the building he was in, due to the number of bodies on the ground.
Describing the victims, Humam says: "Their skin was blue, there was a foamy liquid outside their mouths, their eyes were fixed, and we also saw some families trying to get to the lower floors of the building from the upper floors to escape to escape the smell."
"They didn't know they were heading to death" Humam said, because the missile had fallen into the bottom floor of the building.
Humam saw a man outside a building, whose whole family was killed inside inside his house. The man while cradling his youngest daughter says to the camera: "I couldn't save any of them, she's one of my seven children, they did not leave me one of them."
Humam said the man had lost his entire family. His wife and daughter were inside, as were his brother, his wife and their children."
I have no words to describe the feelings of that father," Hamam told BuzzFeed News. "The words of the father of a girl who died were very upsetting. They made me cry."