Why some Syrian fighters transferred to Turkey vow to return
Although Ahrar al-Sham is associated with al-Qaeda, the people of Zabadani who were forced to flee to Turkey when the regime took over consider it a moderate group and continue to support it.
REYHANLI, Turkey — The gray-haired rebel battalion commander sat on his cheap hotel bed, intact leg tucked under his amputated one, smoking.
Injured in the regime-besieged Syrian resort town of Zabadani about 4½ months before Al-Monitor spoke to him, he said that for 20 days, he had hoped that medical treatment would manage to save his leg.
Unfortunately, it hadn’t. And with a severe lack of trained medical staff in the town near the Lebanese border, "Carpenters are the ones doing the cutting off there," former interior decorator Mohammed, 52, told Al-Monitor.
"But God saved us," he said, adding that the field hospital where he had been treated had been targeted several times by regime forces, but luckily had only suffered slight damage. "The regime targets hospitals and doctors as much, if not more than fighters," he said.
