Jawad Omar, Baladi News
Omar, a media activist of the civil defense center in the town of Madaya recounts sorrowfully the details of the unforgettable day (15-12-2016) of the martyrdom of two of his colleagues in the center along with his injury. He says: "One week before the incident, we were subjected to a fierce bombardment by artillery shells and heavy machineguns, let alone sniping, and our center along with the medical point were also subjected to the same bombardment, however in that specific day, regime forces had escalated their bombardment on our facilities, but no one was hurt, the thing that aroused the anger of the commander of Hezbollah militia and pushed him to escalate the bombardment and inflict casualties among the residents".
He added: "On that day, regime warplanes have targeted the region with 4 barrel bombs which led to casualties among civilians and so we went to rescue them, but another raid targeted us and one of the barrel bombs exploded violently and then I couldn’t see or hear anything for a few seconds until the residents of the region rushed to minister the people who came to rescue them in the first place. A man looked at me and screamed "You are alive! You are alive!", while others were pulling out the bodies of the martyrs and ministering the survivors just before regime artillery had bombarded the place. I started to crawl holding my friend who is double my weight and many other people were crawling with us to flee the bombardment and this encouraged me to continue as I was sure that my friends were among them".
He went on saying: "When the bombardment stopped, an ambulance took us to a basement where we started treatment, but despite my pain I kept wondering where my friends are and when I got no answer for my question, I realized that some of them were killed then my fears became real when I saw a father of one of them crying over a dead body. The loss of my friends made me experience death many times due to the amount of pain and sorrow I went through".