In search of a safe haven from warplanes of the criminal regimes, Civilians inhabit Roman caves and cemeteries in countryside of areas controlled by the opposition
The consequences of years of war are still haunting civilians from one place to another and from house to the other in search of safer places, this coincides with progress by the regime forces and their control of cities and towns who people have entirely displaced. Years and months of displacement cost families the money they saved during these years, also their pockets did not hold up also long as their homes hold up in front of barrel bombs, rocket shells and vacuum missiles that destroy an entire houses, this situation has left the displaced between the most bitter options, such as the burdens of moving north and engaging at rent prices that many people do not accept, or living in a house within the areas that are under shelling and bombing, in front of which a house can’t stand, while some of the people whose situations are bad found a solution and a safe haven to which many the families who refused to leave villages and towns have gone to after the recent escalations, they are the mountains and rocky hills, these families take as a place for their stay through digging caves and using ancient caves, preferring to live in these caves and mountains them than to the displace and bear its burdens and being away of their towns, not to mention the level of safety in them, where what the Romans have made in the ancient times is being used by the Syrians in the 21st century, this type of caves offers a high level of safety because of their carving in harsh rocky places that is not affected by any kind of familiar shells, and because the citizens are now heading toward living in those caves because of their advantages; they had to dig ground shelters near houses and new caves on the outskirts of the mountains and the dirt hills, where Jabal al-Zawiyah areas are the most areas that use them due to their nature and the abundance of ancient caves and the Byzantine and Roman tombs, as in the areas of Jabal al-Arba’in in Ariha and Jabal Shashabo in the countryside of Idlib and Hama.
It is estimated that the number of families inhabiting caves to be in the hundreds, they preferred to stay near their land and their livestock pastures and were not able to get better housing. The danger in these caves lies in the insects and snakes which have been inhabiting them since they were abandoned by humans, in addition to the health problems caused by moisture and dust which usually cause respiratory diseases, and most importantly is that they become a target for monitoring by the reconnaissance drones because they resemble the nature of the field hospitals and hidden military headquarters, which puts them at a greater risk, also there is the coming winter which turns dirt roads into mud roads and causes floods around them and make it difficult to walk, in addition to the extreme cold and their inability to ignite heaters inside the caves because of the smoke that can be monitored by reconnaissance drones, and because they are away of the residential places; the inhabitants of these caves suffer great difficulties in obtaining all requirements of the daily life, from food items such as bread, vegetables, etc., and drinking water, electricity, and medicine, due to the almost complete absence of the areas’ people and the closure of markets, forcing these families to travel long distances to the north so that they can get daily supplies, and while the people of the world around us are developing in the structure and housing, the people of Syria return to stone ages thanks to the bloody war machines and warplanes that still fly over the opposition-controlled areas and throw their fire on the civilians.