‘War followed us’: A Syrian family fled Beirut after Israeli bombardment to face repression, bombing at home

Ahmed Yahia Dabbas fled to Lebanon more than a decade ago to escape the relentless bombardment and frequent airstrikes carried out by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime and its Russian allies in northwest Syria.

Dabbas, 37, moved to the southern suburbs of Beirut, where he found work as a doorman and began rebuilding a new life away from his war-torn country. He and his wife welcomed four children, two boys and two girls, now between the ages of 4 and 9.

As Israel began its retaliatory bombardment of parts of southern Beirut in late September, the family decided to move back to Syria after their home was destroyed.

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Dabbas spoke with Fox News Digital from northwest Syria by phone in an interview translated by the Syrian Emergency Task Force (SETF), a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit and advocacy group, where he described his family’s five-day journey from Lebanon to an area liberated from Assad regime control and the challenges they’ve faced as displaced people.

“We had gone to Lebanon to escape bombardment and war followed us,” he said. “For the same reasons, we had to leave everything in search of safety. And, so, we had to run away from Lebanon back to Syria.”

Once the family reached the Syria-Lebanon border, they encountered numerous checkpoints manned by various security apparatuses of the Assad regime. Dabbas said many of the people running the checkpoints demanded money for them to pass through, and they ultimately ended up paying bribes to keep moving.

Ahmed Yahia Dabbas and his four children during their journey from Lebanon to northwest Syria. (Ahmed Yahia Dabbas  |  Fox News Digital)

The family went through checkpoint after checkpoint before finally reaching Aleppo city. By the time they arrived, it was late, so they spent the night before heading to a crossing point into non-regime-held areas of Aleppo province.

They then spent three nights in a kind of “no man’s land” between regime- and rebel-held areas of Aleppo. Dabbas said as they were waiting, they were spit on, beaten and weren’t allowed to eat or drink, as was the case with other people who were fleeing Lebanon and looking to leave regime-held areas.

He added that two days went by before they were given any food. They eventually made it to the rebel side of the border and spent one day at a Free Syrian Army checkpoint before finally registering with authorities in opposition areas and settling in the northern countryside of Idlib Oct. 4.

The Dabbas family spent three nights in a kind of “no man’s land” between regime- and rebel-held areas of Aleppo. (Ahmed Yahia Dabbas I Fox News Digital)

The Dabbas family is one of many who chose to flee to non-regime-held areas of Syria amid fear of arbitrary detainment, torture, forced disappearance and even death at the hands of the Syrian government.

Mouaz Moustafa, the executive director of SETF, told Fox News Digital it’s “scary” and “disturbing” that some Gulf Arab states are normalizing relations with Assad and some European countries are considering forcefully sending refugees back to Syria.

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“Syria’s not safe,” Moustafa said. “Anywhere regime-held, it is where people would rather continue walking after walking for so long.”

Syrian Red Crescent rescuers attend to displaced people arriving from Lebanon at the Jdeidat Yabous border crossing in southwestern Syria Oct. 7, 2024. (Louai Beshara/AFP via Getty Images)

The U.N. refugee agency said in early November more than 470,000 people — around 30% of them Lebanese and 70% of them Syrians — had crossed into Syria from Lebanon to escape Israeli bombardment.

Israel intensified its bombing campaign against the terrorist group Hezbollah in September after more than a year of cross-border exchanges, which began a day after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks in south Israel. The Jewish State took out several high-profile leaders of the terrorist group, including longtime Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and senior commander Ibraham Aqil, who had a $7 million bounty on his head from the U.S. State Department.

Although Israel and Lebanon agreed to a cease-fire deal in late November, Dabbas said he and his family won’t return to Beirut. The father of four said his brother, who is also displaced in northwest Syria, has helped them out, but they’re running out of the food they received upon arrival, and he’s struggling to find a job. 

Syrians who were refugees in Lebanon return to their home country after a journey to the opposition-held northern Idlib province through the crossing Aoun al-Dadat north of Manbij Oct. 9, 2024. (Bilal Alhammoud/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images)

They live in a crowded house with other extended family members who were unable to flee Syria in 2014 and face bombardment “every day” from the Assad regime, Russia and Iranian-backed forces.

“There is no safety and security,” Dabbas said. He told Fox News Digital he’s experienced an indescribable feeling of joy being back in his home country, reuniting with family members, but he wants peace and the bombing to stop.

Drone attacks in northwest Syria

The humanitarian crisis in northwest Syria has worsened in recent months, with both an increase in displaced people and a surge in drone attacks on civilians in residential areas. 

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimates 3.5 million people are internally displaced in northwest Syria, and 2 million are living in camps. 

Ismail Alabdullah, a volunteer with Syria Civil Defense, also known as the White Helmets, a rescue organization founded in 2013 after the start of the Syrian civil war, told Fox News Digital the Assad regime and its allies started a new strategy of attacking residential areas with suicide drones.

The White Helmets teams capture footage of a drone. Suicide drone attacks have increased in northwest Syria in 2024. (The White Helmets)

Alabdullah said, since Nov. 10, White Helmets teams have responded to 876 attacks. The targets are often civilian areas, such as farms, towns and agricultural areas and civilian infrastructure. 

“This kind of weapon, suicide drones, is very, very dangerous, to be honest,” he said. “They are cheap, and they can fly anywhere they want. And they can attack any place they want.” 

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“Families are afraid to send their children to school,” Alabdullah added.

“Maybe the world still – they don’t want to hear about this. They want to hear that the bombings are stopped and nothing is happening in Syria, and northwest Syria is safe. It’s not safe. The attacks are still going on, especially in Idlib.”

Syria Civil Defence, commonly known as the White Helmets, respond to an attack against civilians in northwest Syria. (The White Helmets)

Syrian regime forces and their allies intensified attacks against civilians in western Aleppo and eastern Idlib in recent months, displacing hundreds more families.

In a surprising development, Syrian rebels entered Aleppo, the country’s second-largest city, on Friday for the first time since 2016 after launching an offensive against regime forces earlier this week.

Reuters noted the shock offensive was the first territorial advance since 2020 after a cease-fire agreement between Turkey and Russia halted fighting in Idlib.

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Anti-regime groups take control of some villages in the western countryside as the clashes between the Bashar al-Assad regime and the opposition armed group Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham continue in Aleppo, Syria, Nov. 27, 2024.  (Kasim Rammah/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Alabdullah told Fox News Digital the White Helmets still need help from the international community and the need is bigger than their capacity, especially as winter approaches and they deal with an increased number of displaced people.

“We need everyone to stand with us to stop the atrocities, to stop the killing,” he said. “Imagine kids in the camps. They don’t know the meaning of a key. Up to now, they haven’t seen a door with a key, and they don’t know this is a door for their houses.

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“The whole thing needs to be stopped. People need to return to their homes to end the suffering, to get their lives back.”