‘Hell is never far away’ - the female medic risking her life for Aleppo
Whenever she hears the helicopter, Umm Abdu tenses, collects her medical kit and runs through the lanes of Old Aleppo to the only working hospital in her neighbourhood.
It is a familiar routine: the thump of the rotor blades, the boom of the explosion from the barrel bomb released by the Syrian government troops far above, followed by Umm Abdu’s scramble towards the four-storey building that will receive the inevitable human carnage.
Not that the hospital is safe. Most large buildings around it have been obliterated by the same half-tonne bombs, leading those who work, live and die within its iodine-stained walls to believe that they are the real targets.
Umm Abdu lives in a small flat with her three remaining children.
The contradiction seems lost, or maybe even no longer relevant, in a conflict where death often comes from the skies. Barrel bombs, the Syrian war’s most savage weapon, are also its most indiscriminate killer. Slowly, methodically, they have tipped the tide in the favour of the regime, which continues to edge around Aleppo’s north-eastern flank as its bombs erode the city of civilians, fighters, and hope.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/02/-sp-female-medic-aleppo-syria-war-umm-abdu?CMP=twt_gu