Photo: Msallam Abd Albaset for AJE

 

Abu Nidal Abed, a 43-year-old fighter in the Free Syria Army (FSA), his wife and two children have been sleeping in a hastily constructed bomb shelter for months.

Located in the Saqba town in the Ghouta area of Damascus' countryside, their home has been damaged by air strikes launched by the Syrian government throughout the five-year civil war. "I spent 45 days building the bomb shelter to protect us from the rocket fire and air strikes," he tells Al Jazeera. "Before we built this, the kids were always scared of air strikes, especially when I wasn't at home." Explaining that he had already lost one son in the civil war, Abed said he was motivated by fear for his children's safety, hoping to protect them from the exposure to the Syrian government's air strikes.

Abed's son, 25-year-old Nidal, was killed while fighting with the FSA, in the Damascus countryside, in 2015.

The UN special envoy for Syria, Steffan de Mistura, estimated in April that more than 400,000 people have been killed throughout the fighting
in Syria.

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