He looked at the walls; it had cost him 15 years of savings and his wife’s jewelry to afford the two-story home in the village of Tal Mardikh, where he had lived for a decade. By Sunday, government troops had reached to within 10 miles of Tal Mardikh. They headed north toward the Turkish border, joining a chaotic mass exodus — more than 180,000 people strong, aid groups estimate — of Syrians escaping the intensifying barrage. One of his neighbors, Amjad Shamaali, had been stranded for hours in Tal Mardikh, desperately seeking a driver willing to brave the airstrikes on the road from the village to the north. After he and his family escaped, they reached a makeshift camp settlement in the orchards west of the town of Saraqeb, a city some seven miles north of Tal Mardikh, but found no proper shelter.

Source: Los Angeles Times December 26, 2019 20:37 UTC