This Is What the World’s Bloodiest War Looks Like #1

A photo a day from the Syrian civil war

This Is What the World’s Bloodiest War Looks Like #1 This Is What the World’s Bloodiest War Looks Like #1

Uncategorized September 20, 2013

Thomas Hammond photo This Is What the World’s Bloodiest War Looks Like #1 A photo a day from the Syrian civil war Thirty months.... This Is What the World’s Bloodiest War Looks Like #1
Thomas Hammond photo

This Is What the World’s Bloodiest War Looks Like #1

A photo a day from the Syrian civil war

Thirty months. More than 100,000 dead. Millions displaced. The Syrian civil war is by far the bloodiest war in all the world today—and it could only get worse as the political, economic, humanitarian and sectarian crises it has spawned spill into neighboring countries.

I’ve come to the Middle East with fellow reporter Mitch Swenson and photographer Thomas Hammond to document the worst war in the world. In the impoverished city of Tripoli in northern Lebanon, we met Ahmad Abous, an electrician and grandfather. He’s a Sunni in a violent neighborhood divided between Lebanese Sunnis and Alawites originally from Syria.

On Aug. 23 Abous stepped into the Taqwa mosque for a quick prayer, leaving his young son and two granddaughters in his van parked nearby. A massive bomb exploded, killing 42 people including the three kids. Abous found them burned to cinder, clutching each other in a final embrace. He told us he buried them before his daughter, the two girls’ mother, could see them—to spare her the nightmarish sight. Tears welled in Abous’ eyes as he recalled the terrible day.

Lebanese authorities arrested five men in connection with the bombing, including pro-Syrian clerics widely believed to have been acting on orders from Damascus, aiming to inflict a blow against Lebanese Sunnis who have supported rebels in Syria.

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