'Even if Daesh were just walking down the road they would find someone to slaughter': Syrian father reveals how he witnessed ISIS beheadings before fleeing with his wife and five children
- Jamil Hussein Hawayish, 50, and his family fled from a village in northern Syria
- He witnessed beheadings and says: 'I still see the images in my head everyday'
- Around 11 million Syrians have left their homes since the civil war started in 2011
- Of those 1.5 million have fled the north-east of Syria, where ISIS are in power
A farmer who fled ISIS's terrifying reign in northern Syria with his family and now lives in a windowless shack in Lebanon has been talking about life under the jihadists.
The family are among 1.5 million Syrians who have fled the region controlled by ISIS, who are referred to in Arabic as Daesh.
Jamil Hussein Hawayish, 50, said: 'Even if Daesh were just walking down the road they would find someone to slaughter. No-one could intervene.'
Jamil Hussein Hawayish (pictured, second left) sits in the wooden hut he built in the Akkar region of northern Lebanon with the support of the UNHCR.
The father-of-five said: 'I used to shake like a little baby. I hoped it was not my turn.
'I still see the images in my head everyday but I'm safer here and I'm trying to be strong for my children.'
He had a farm and three wives in a village in the Al-Hasakah governorate in the far north east of Syria.
After ISIS took over they endured 18 months of its reign of terror but he successfully shielded his youngsters from the spectre of violence by keeping them permanently indoors.
In 2015 he fled with one of his wives, Helwa, and five children to the Akkar region of Lebanon, near the border with Syria, with little to remind them of their home apart from psychological scars.
Jamil (pictured) said: 'When I got to Lebanon I felt I was getting my dignity back'
He recalls seeing two men having their heads cut off in the street in his home village.
On another occasion he was confronted by an ISIS fighter who had a man's head in his hand.
Jamil survived by answering the killers' questions and praying he would be spared their unpredictable savagery.
He says the men were decapitated with knives, on the street and in broad daylight, while ISIS killers gloried in their terrorism.
One of the victims was apparently targeted for listening to music, others were attacked and killed because of the way they dressed.
The family have built a makeshift wooden hut on a patch of land in Lebanon, with help from UN staff and Irish aid agency Concern.
They are one of 40 families who live in windowless huts with electricity rationed to a few hours a day.
Jamil said: 'When I got to Lebanon I felt I was getting my dignity back.'
Khaled, 12, (pictured) said: 'I don't have time to live my life. I don't go to school. I want to see my home again but it could be destroyed'
Two of his sons, Mohammad, 20, and Khaled, who is 12, and his daughter Khouloud, 14, work from daybreak to sunset for a few dollars.
Mohammad said: 'Life under ISIS was like slavery. If you have 10 cows you have to give them the cows. You have no choice.'
Khaled, evidently exhausted from day after day of hard work on Lebanese farms, said: 'I don't have time to live my life. I don't go to school. I want to see my home again but it could be destroyed.
'I don't know anything about my future. I don't even have time to live my life as a child.'
Jamil said ISIS hounded Sunni Muslims as much as they hounded everyone else in Syria
Jamil, who is a Sunni Muslim, said ISIS barred traditional prayers at a funeral.
He said: 'The graveyard, they even blew the graves up. The dead even had a share of this. And the mosque, the house of god they destroyed it.'
But Jamil said: 'Don't go away with the idea that all Sunni are ISIS or Daesh.
'We have been hounded by Daesh. If you are Sunni and you don't apply the law of Daesh you will be slaughtered. The Sunni have been hounded as much as any other religion in Syria.
'We used to live next door to each other - Christian, Sunni, Alawite. We lived. When Daesh came, if you were a Christian sometimes killing them was good for them.'
Jamil (pictured) said Christian families were particularly persecuted by ISIS and sometimes a quick death was the best fate they could hope for
Unicef spokeswoman Juliet Touma, speaking from Damascus, said: '2016 has been the worst for the children of Syria.
'The more the war continues the more we realise, that there are no winners to this, or that there are only losers, and the biggest losers really are the children.'
But she said: 'Luckily, and thanks to the determination of the people of Syria - parents, fathers, mothers, teachers - thanks to the support of host governments, children are able to go back to school, they are able to resume their studies, catch up on what they've lost.'
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