Mohammad Abed al-Manan Abdou, an elderly man in his 70s, did not expect that he would be killed with his wife, Salam Rashouh, and his grandson, Mohammed, in a US-led coalition airstrike.
Abdou and his family had been living under the control of the Islamic State forces in al-Tabqah for years with the hope of seeing his son who was detained and has been held by the Islamic State forces since 2013.
The tragedy lies not only in the death of the innocent family but also that their bodies remained trapped under the rubble for more than two weeks after the Syrian Democratic Forces took control of the city.
Speaking to Ammar Johmani from Germany, Wassim Abdou, the couple’s son and a member of the Kurdish brotherhood coordination council, said that his father was living with his wife, one of his sons and grandchildren in al-Tabqa in the western countryside of al-Raqqa. He used to work as an employee of the Euphrates Dam institution before he opened his electrical store in al-Tabqah city.
Abdou explained that the Coalition forces targeted the house next to theirs in the third neighborhood where they lived. The family were scared, so they left their house and began staying in the ground floor of a nearby building to ensure their safety, but the Coalition forces targeted that building.
Abdou explained that his brother was outside the house when the building was bombed, and he rushed back to it. He managed to pull his wife and one of his daughters from under the rubble. His other daughter suffered a major injury to her hand due to the blast, and his son was physically disfigured as a result of the bombing. Abdou added that his brother could see part of his father’s body emerging from under the rubble, but there was no sign of their mother.
“Three days after the air strike, the Syrian Democratic militias and the Islamic State forces reached an agreement that led to the withdrawal of the Islamic State.
At this time my brother went to the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces militias to bring the machines necessary to retrieve the bodies of his parents and help his injured daughter, but the militia did not release the machines,” said Abdou.
The SDF move comes after the militia had formed a civilian council following its takeover of al-Tabqah. The bodies of the Abdou family members were only rescued 15 days after the incident and were buried in al-Tabqa
