Dodging death in East Aleppo as a journalist

[Sunlei]

A trapped American journalist describes what it's like reporting from besieged East Aleppo.
By Bilal Abdul Kareem


......."This is the safest place to be," he had told us. "The regime thinks this building is already destroyed."

We weren't sure whether or not he was serious. The basement was a mess. There was dust and dirt everywhere, but he'd carved out a small corner where he'd placed a mattress on a thin sheet of plastic. A car battery provided electricity. After an hour, things calm down and we decide to return to our apartment to collect our camera, computers and valuables. The doors and windows have been blown away and anyone could walk in and take them.

We run alongside buildings to avoid being an easy target for the government planes that patrol the skies, firing on anything that moves. We turn the corner into our street. The cars are still on fire, but so, too, is our apartment. An incendiary bomb has punched through the walls and started a fire that has consumed everything - our computers, camera, clothes and what little food we had. Food is hard to come by here.

I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but I notice that ours is the only apartment in the area that is on fire. Our media office in Idlib was shelled, killing three people this past summer. My car was mangled by a drone strike a few weeks later, and another attack was launched on our vehicle as we were covering a story a few months ago.

While some celebrate my "courageous" presence in Syria, the government and its Russian helpers are not known to be friendly to Western journalists reporting in English. I sometimes have to interview those on the ground who have anti-American sentiments as well. All of this makes Aleppo, and Syria in general, a challenging place to report from......


http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2016/12/dodging-death-east-aleppo-journalist-161201122303064.html

[Scurrilous]

1. K & R

[democrank]

2. K & R