A Syrian family that survived a 2013 chemical weapons attack that killed hundreds of people near the country’s capital, Damascus, told news agency The Associated Press (AP) the ordeal they experienced haunts them to this day.
The Aug. 21, 2013 attack targeted several Damascus suburbs, including Zamalka, where the Arbeeni family lives.
Government forces of then-President Bashar Assad were blamed for the attack.
The Arbeenis remember how they locked themselves inside a windowless room in their home for hours, escaping the fate of dozens of their neighbors who perished in what was one of the deadliest moments of Syria’s civil war.
The gas that was used — sarin, an extremely toxic nerve agent — can kill in minutes.
The Syrian government denied it was behind the attack and blamed opposition fighters , an accusation the opposition rejected as Assad’s forces were the only side in the brutal civil war to posses sarin.
The United States subsequently threatened military retaliation, with then-President Barack Obama saying Assad’s use of chemical weapons would be Washington’s “red line.”
“It was a horrifying night,” Hussein Arbeeni, 41, told The Associated Press on Wednesday.
The surface-to-surface missiles fell close to his family’s home without exploding, instead leaking the poisonous gas.
Shortly after that, he says the family members had difficulties breathing, their eyes started to ache and they hearts beat faster and faster.
Arbeeni, his parents, his siblings and their families, as well as a neighbor — 23 people in all — rushed into the only room in their home without windows and closed the door.
