Assad uses other methods that are illegal under international law. His regime relies on tanks, missiles, and guns to kill dissenters and civilians. In 2016, he dropped 12,958 barrel bombs, aiming for mosques, schools, and hospitals. The Syrian army has repeatedly tortured and killed people who are detained illegally for disagreeing with his regime. One report, relying on evidence from documents verified by the U.N. and other human rights organizations, showed that Assad’s regime carried out the “systematic killing” of 11,000 people between five months in 2011. Tens of thousands of people have died in prisons in Syria, and Amnesty International has recorded at least 35 different types of torture.

Like Adolf Hitler, Assad's regime reportedly burns the bodies of his victims. Newly declassified documents show that a crematorium was built at a prison outside of Damascus, where around 50 people have been hanged per day, according to Stuart Jones, who is the acting assistant secretary for Near Eastern Affairs at the U.S. State Department The crematorium was built in 2013 to hide these mass murders from the world.

No wonder so many Syrians have fled out of the country or to the last rebel-held areas in Syria to find any kind of safety. Khan Sheikhoun is in Idlib Province, one of those rebel-held regions. A week after the chemical weapons attack, Teen Vogue interviewed two Syrian women in another part of Idlib Province not far from Khan Sheikhoun. The women have not been able to escape Syria, but they have connections with people who have been resettled in the United States, like the other young women in the Ask a Syrian Girl videos series. They are still in danger, doing what they can to keep their families alive in the rebel-held area where Assad is focusing his attacks. Their story shows the other tactics Assad and his regime use so effectively: starvation and slow devastation. The psychological trauma they have endured is almost as damaging at the physical effects of the war they are trying to survive.

Over video chat, the women showed a basement where they are currently holed up, living between concrete walls, among blown-out windows, and with their children who wait with them in the dark. The mothers told Teen Vogue that their children are living on bulgur grain and no vegetables. They may have meat once a month. Even when school is in session, one mother said she is afraid to send her children because they may never come back.

Bombs fell not far away while they talked. We couldn’t hear the bombs, but we could tell when they hit because the women jumped and stopped talking, asking each other what had happened, taking guesses at how far away the shelling was from them. The only light visible in our chats came from their phone, and it cast strange shadows on their faces. Their eyes were exhausted, red-rimmed, desperate. They told Teen Vogue they have buckets of water set aside if the bombs contain sarin gas; they plan to douse their children immediately. They have no idea if this will save their children, but a neighbor told them it might, and they are doing what little they can to be ready in case Assad launches more chemical weapons. Even though they are miles away, they saw victims of the Khan Sheikhoun attack. Volunteers brought the affected people to other areas because the Assad regime bombed the Khan Sheikhoun hospitals to keep the sarin gas victims from being able to get medical help. These women saw children who foamed at the mouth and struggled to breathe before they died. They are afraid this will happen to their own kids.