Sleeping blissfully, twin girls Howraa and Malak snuggle up in a squalid camp where weary Syrians are fighting for survival.
In three years, their only home has been a tiny makeshift tent. Outside, 15 youngsters in tatty sandals pose for a picture in the dust. These are children of war.
They are the forgotten victims of Vladimir Putin ’s bombs from his last assault on the innocents.
Seven years ago the Russian president waded in to help fellow warmonger Bashar al-Assad, whose decade-long civil conflict has claimed the lives of half a million. Kremlin airstrikes bolstered Assad’s efforts to quell a rebel uprising in Syria.
Now Putin is using a near identical playbook to flatten large swathes of Ukraine. Shelled homes in Kyiv, Kharkiv and Mariupol bear stark similarities to dusty remains in Aleppo, Damascus, Idlib, Raqqa and Homs.
In eastern Syria, the twins’ mother Fawziya, 37, had no option but to flee after Deir El Zour city was flattened by Tu-22M3 long-range bombers. And for Fawziya the scenes now witnessed in Europe are all too hauntingly familiar.
The mum of 11, whose youngest is three-month-old Sham, said: “When the bombs started we would leave home and stand in the forests – there were no shelters. We would wait all night and would see bodies.
“We just waited to see if we would die or not.”
Fawziya handed her savings to bandits to make the perilous crossing over snow-tipped mountains between Syria and Lebanon.
Now she is forced to send her three teenage daughters to work in the farms of the Bekaa Valley, where they earn less than 70p for back-breaking eight-hour shifts.
Fawziya said: “I left with nothing, just the clothes we were wearing. I have nothing and we struggle to eat. I paid traffickers to cross the border because we needed to leave.”
The family is among 1.5 million refugees who fled to makeshift camps along the Lebanese border. But many have not been able to make the trip at all.
Hassan, 52, left behind his daughter in Aleppo – where Putin’s thunderous bombs had the most chilling impact. Hassan has not spoken to his girl for more than a year.
The father of eight, who has spent nine years in the camp, said: “I know living here is picking between the bad and the worse. Staying is bad, but what is worse?”
For years the Lebanese people have welcomed refugees – but the Middle Eastern country is now facing its own crisis.
Fuel price hikes and an economy in freefall have left the country on its knees, with fears of a civil war. It is believed more than 70% now live in poverty. Charities like Save the Children are helping thousands of little ones access education, protection, shelter, food security and health care.
Rayan, the charity’s manager for Bekaa Valley, said: “Lebanon used to have the nouveau riche, now it has the nouveau poor. We are seeing social tensions and are at a tipping point.”
Many of the migrants are carrying physical and emotional scars. Ismail, 57, and wife Majida, 54, fear son Alaa, 27, was killed after being kidnapped by a torture squad in 2012.
He was falsely labelled a rebel and accused of harbouring weapons. Ismail, who lived on the outskirts of the capital Damascus, was held for six months and tortured before being released.
The former postal worker said: “I was in a room one metre by one metre with four other people. It felt like a coffin, but I wasn’t dead. I was tortured with sticks and had the bottom of my feet whipped.
“They gave us random sucker punches. Eventually they let us go. But when I got out my family were living in Ghouta and there was a chemical weapons strike nearby.
“There were children’s bodies everywhere. Kids were coming to the village foaming at the mouth.”
While Assad is the main threat, families in Syria also face the daily threat of ISIS terrorists. Mother-of-five Nour, 27, fled her home in the jihadist-controlled city of al-Hasakah after her children were forced to witness executions.
She said: “Our house was demolished by an airstrike. We were sleeping and all of the windows blew out. We were always in fear. There was constant sound of jets and ISIS were active. The children would see bodies.
“One woman refused to wear a face covering and they cut her head off as a warning. If anyone was accused of stealing they would cut your hand off.”
The Russian military says its strikes in Syria target terrorists but activists say mainstream rebels and civilians are being killed too. Now there are reports Putin is enlisting Syrian troops to enter Ukraine.
Justin Bronk, a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, said: “This is all part of Putin’s playbook and he used the same tactics in Syria.
“When they don’t have manpower to take a city street by street, they besiege it, starve and bombard people while conducting strikes on hospitals to make life as unlivable as possible to force them into capitulation.”
Save the Children has been on the ground in Lebanon responding to children’s needs, every day and in times of crisis, since 1953. To help their vital work, please log on to www.savethechildren.org
