As he lay paralysed on the ground in a pool of blood, a bullet lodged in his spine, Khalid Assad knew he had to make a decision.
The 24-year-old shopkeeper, shot in the back by a Syrian Army sniper in Idlib, could simply wait and entrust his fate to the mercy of the regime — or he could try to escape through the minefields up the sides of the mountain frontier to Turkey.
“There was only one real option: escape,” he said yesterday. “All the hospitals in Idlib are controlled by the regime and there is no hope for the wounded taken there if they are suspected of supporting the revolution.”
It took two days on an improvised litter, dodging minefields and checkpoints, with no painkillers and just a bandage across his wound, to reach Turkey. For short periods friends drove him in a car. “They had to keep stopping, taking me out and hiding me in the bushes while they checked the route ahead for soldiers before coming back for me,” he said.
The final leg was at night and on a stretcher carried up the mountain by rebel fighters of the Free Syrian Army. Today he is in a hospital in Antakya, southwestern Turkey. The sniper’s bullet remains in his spine.
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“I am alive,” he said quietly, “but the doctors say there is not a chance that I shall ever walk again.”
More than 1,300 Syrian refugees have fled to Turkey in the past few days, escaping the Syrian Army’s rampage through Idlib and the regime’s killing spree in Homs.
Appalled by the latest reports of summary execution, torture and massacre in Idlib, Turkey called yesterday on all its citizens to leave Syria immediately before the possible closure of its embassy in Damascus.
Tayyip Erdogan, the Prime Minister of Turkey, said he was considering setting up a “buffer zone” along the border with Syria.
Four members of the Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) announced the closures of their embassies in Syria in protest at the violence, according to the Saudi Press Agency (SPA), quoting Abdullatif al-Zayani, the GCC Secretary-General. Kuwait, Oman, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar were to close their embassies. Saudi Arabia and Bahrain announced embassy closures on Wednesday.
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Syrian forces seized control of much of Idlib last weekend and escaping refugees spoke of death squads moving through residential areas with lists of names and addresses of suspected protesters.
“After the tankfire and artillery ceased the soldiers came with lists and started killing people at various addresses,” said Mustafa, 25, who gave only his first name. “As they approached our house my brother and I chose to run for it. There were bodies in the streets and buildings on fire. Then a burst of gunfire knocked us both down.”
Mustafa was hit by a bullet in the shoulder. His brother was shot in the chest. Having experienced torture at Idlib’s Military Intelligence Headquarters where he was taken after being arrested at a protest, Mustafa remained focused on escape.
The brothers survived the ordeal across the mountains to Turkey, carried at times on the backs of other refugees. Now Mustafa wants to return to Syria. “My parents are missing. I have to find them,” he said.