is an independent journalist and photographer who has worked extensively in the Middle East – on the ground in Syria, Egypt, Iraq and Palestine, while also covering the conflict in Yemen since 2015. Follow her on Twitter @VanessaBeeley

is an independent journalist and photographer who has worked extensively in the Middle East – on the ground in Syria, Egypt, Iraq and Palestine, while also covering the conflict in Yemen since 2015. Follow her on Twitter @VanessaBeeley

Western media, filing their reports on Syria from safe offices in New York and London, ignore atrocities committed almost daily against children and civilians by terrorists in Idlib.

A recent report compiled by the US coalition’s primary anti-Assad “evidence” producers has condemned the alleged Syrian/Russian targeting of civilians in Idlib. In familiar fashion, the Guardian accepted the White Helmet version of events without any apparent fact-checking or verification. Claims by the notorious terrorist-linked group and its PR agency, Syria Campaign, that 304 children and 11 “rescue workers” had been killed since April 2019 went unchallenged by one of the foremost “humanitarian” war-promoting media outlets – one that has sustained and nourished the criminalization of the Syrian government and its allies since 2011.

In a war, all loss of life is to be mourned. The nine-year war that has ravaged Syria has been externally fomented and financed by belligerent states whose primary ambition is to topple the Syrian government and to return Syria to the dark ages under an Islamic extremist regime that would be compliant with the regional plans of the US alliance.

The Western media consistently omit this aspect of the war while they cry their crocodile tears over the senseless death of children subsisting under the tyranny of the “moderate rebels,” a ridiculous term that is used to conceal the fact that “Idlib is the largest Al-Qaeda safe haven since 9/11” – bought and paid for by members of the US coalition. Children caught in the crossfire of a legitimate Syrian military campaign to rid its territory of armed extremist gangs and ethnic cleansing mercenaries.

East Aleppo was liberated by the Syrian Arab Army in December 2016. I was there as each district poured forth its children, released from a five-year incarceration under Al-Nusra Front-led rule, emaciated, faces streaked with soot and dust, some with missing limbs – the terrorists and their “civil defense” would not treat civilian wounds, preferring to sever the leg or arm from the body as a more expedient remedy while the armed gang-members received treatment in the militant-occupied hospitals.

West Aleppo is still under attack. The districts of west Aleppo that border areas of the Aleppo countryside and Idlib are brimming with armed groups, dominated by Al-Nusra Front rebrands such as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).

On a recent trip to some of the areas of west Aleppo that are literally neighboring Al-Nusra Front embeds, snipers and military centers, I spoke to the people who Western media hide from view. The children that play “dodge the sniper” in streets permanently in the crosshairs of extremist gunmen who pick civilians off like rabbits. Graffiti on the walls warns people not to cross the street.



The maimed and mutilated children that are commonplace in the streets of Khalidiyah, Jamiliya and Al Zahraa are ignored by the Guardian Middle East editors. These “journalists” receive their Syrian war reports from compromised entities like the White Helmets and their terrorist colleagues, they do not venture deep into areas of Syria still under threat from rocket launchers, gas canisters stuffed full of shrapnel, glass, lethal tungsten dust – they do not dodge explosive bullets, sniper fire or mortars raining down upon their neighborhoods.

From the comfort of their offices in Beirut, London and New York, they file meaningless reports that deny the existence of nine-year-old Malak, who was shot by a sniper in Bani Zaid three years ago as she crossed the street to school. She lost her left leg below the knee.

Eighteen-year-old Mahmoud told me that three months ago, a terrorist mortar attack claimed the lives of his mother, aunt and three-year-old baby sister. When I asked him what he wanted to say to people in the West, he shrugged, puzzled by the question. Then he told me that he hoped God would curse the West for their role in promoting and supporting the terrorist groups that massacred his family members.

Hamoud was crossing the road in front of me in Khalidiyah, he was 16 when a terrorist mortar tore his leg from his body. He walks with a crutch because prosthetic limbs are too painful for him to bear. He also told me:

“What can I say to the West – that they should keep supporting the terrorists who are killing us? May God curse them for what they did to us.”

A few days after I left these terrorist-ravaged districts, more than 40 missiles targeted these areas, leaving seven civilians dead and wounding more than 30 others. A family were burned alive in their car. The mother, Samar Hammou, and her eight-year-old son Omar were killed. The daughter, 14-year-old Ekram, had her legs so horribly burned that they have been amputated above the knee to save her life. Her father has still not told her that her mother and brother perished in the fire.

So, where is the Guardian’s outrage, horror and condemnation of these atrocities committed almost every day against innocent children and civilians by the extremist armed gangs in Idlib?

The following interview is with Mahmoud, a resident of Al Zahraa. His house is literally next door to the Al-Nusra Front-occupied houses at the end of his street. An unexploded gas canister nestles under a bush in front of his home. He told me that nobody will cross the deserted street because they will be shot, and if anyone tries to rescue them, they will be shot also.

The White Helmets were created by the US coalition to document “war crimes” but only the alleged crimes that incriminate the Syrian government, army and allies, not those that will expose the murderous criminality of Western regimes who fund, promote and lionize the child-murderers preying upon the defenseless citizens of west Aleppo. Relief for these besieged neighborhoods will only come when Idlib is liberated and the terrorist groups banished from Syrian territory.

Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!