Twin infants just two of the victims of Syrian gas attack

The true cost of war doesn’t become clear until video footage like this comes to the public. When we see a 29-year-old father holding the bodies of his 9-month-old twins, then we start to remember that war is nothing but dying—and most of the victims are innocent.

Abdel Hameed al-Youssef could not save his 9-month-old twins from the poison gas, which engulfed his home. “I was right beside them,” he said.” I took them outside with their mother.

“They were conscious, but 10 minutes later we could smell it (the gas) and my children couldn’t handle it anymore.”

Al-Youssef is a shop owner, not a soldier. he is not on any side in the conflict destroying Syria.

His tiny children are the victims of somebody else’s war—somebody far away, somebody still alive.

Al-Youssef tried to save his children. All he can do now is mourn them.

Aya Fadel is a 25-year-old school teacher. She was woken up at half past six by the sound of bombing.

I started to feel terrible, our eyes hurting us, the air became very heavy,” she said. “There was no bad smell but the air was so heavy to breathe.”

She fled with her husband and her son. In the street she passed a truck. In the back were the bodies of her relatives, neighbors, and friends.

“We saw our relatives. All were my relatives, my friends, my neighbors. I can’t believe it. My God.

“ Children … Ammar, Aya, Mohammad and Ahmed; I love you … My aunt Sanaa, my uncle Yasser, Abdel Kareem, please, hear me. I saw them, they were dead. All are dead now.”

Aya Fadel is a school teacher—not a rebel, not a government soldier. A school teacher, a mother, a daughter—victim.

A young woman who watched much of her family die for a war, which has nothing to do with any of them.

“My heart is broken,” Aya Fadel said. “Everything was terrible. Everyone was crying and couldn’t breathe.”

It is easy to read “hundreds of thousands killed.” It is easy to watch pictures of explosions shot from many miles away.

It is easy to stare out our phones and watch the war continue day after day.

It is easy to forget that the numbers we hear, the distant images we see in the news, all represent people.

People just like us—with one essential difference. Those people are the helpless victims of a war they did not start.

Aya Fadel has a message for all of us, safely watching the war on our phones from thousands of miles away.

“Please listen to me, please save us, we are the victims of this unjust war. Please don’t be silent anymore. Please stop it, please save those scared children. Your silence kills us. Move, change, do anything to save Syrians. Enough is enough. Enough is enough.”

What is hard, is having enough compassion to feel the pain of these people. What is hard is trying to help.

How many years, how many lives? When will “enough really be enough?