The White Helmets

Take and go.

Take him, take him, take him, take him.

I am married, and I have a daughter.

Her name is Amal.

Kiss me, kiss me.

Don't give Mom a hard time. Okay?

My family is very important to me.

I'm always worrying about them.

I have a strong belief in my work for the White Helmets.

And every time I'm on a rescue mission, I think about them.

Abu Omar!

Abu Omar!

Hello. Where is your dad? Where is Abu Omar?

-He's ready. -Is he ready?

Okay, tell him to come down and we'll go to the center.

The morale of the White Helmets is always high.

We are always ready to respond to incidents.

But we just hope that the bombing and air strikes stop.

Mom, where are you? Do you need anything?

We have to admit that the situation in Syria

is going from bad to worse.

There is no solution on the horizon.

The situation is sad. Syria is sad.

Before joining the White Helmets,

I was with an armed group.

I fought for the opposition for three months.

But I saw that the regime's campaign was targeting civilians.

And I thought, "It is better to do humanitarian work than to be armed.

Better to rescue a soul than to take one."

It's the Russians.

Come on, guys, quickly! Go! Go!

Make a turn and come back!

We, the White Helmets, are the first to arrive when there is bombing.

- -

If you don't have some courage, you wouldn't continue doing what we do.

Go here!

Any human being, no matter who they are

or which side they're on,

if they need our help...

it's our duty to save them.

Does anybody need rescuing?

There's nothing. Right?

Abu Feras lives there, but I don't know whether he was in or out.

- Here? -He's got an iron door.

We can't get a sense if he's in or not.

Can we get in via your balcony?

Whenever I'm on a rescue,

I try as hard as possible

to save every person under the rubble,

whether they are young or old.

I consider them all

to be my family.

He usually goes out during the day and comes back at night.

Okay, there's nothing more upstairs, right?

There's nothing, but just check on Abu Mahmoud.

Abu Mahmoud!

-There's no one here. - Thank God.

Brother, ask people about him and keep an eye out for him.

Don't forget about him.

Whatever you need, we're the White Helmets.

There are a number of injuries and possibly two people killed.

No, there is nothing more. We're heading back to the center.

I have been with the White Helmets for three years.

I've seen many people who have died in bombings.

I've also seen many people who were rescued alive.

Abu Waleed, give me a crowbar! I want to look under the mattress.

But the hardest thing is seeing dead bodies.

This affects me a lot.

Guys, don't come closer. Get me a corpse bag.

But this is my duty and my job.

I have to do it for the people, for the civilians.

Only her relatives, please.

People who are not doing anything, please leave.

Her hand is stuck.

They've struck!

Get down!

On the ground!

The situation is very difficult in Syria right now.

Especially with Russia's intervention to support the regime.

They say that they are fighting ISIS,

but they are targeting civilians.

The casualties are rising daily.

The bloodbath is not stopping.

I've lost two colleagues very dear and precious to my heart.

They were taking part in a rescue of civilians.

A week before, we had all been together, working, eating and drinking...

and then they were dead.

Many of my colleagues have been killed.

In Aleppo city alone, we've lost 30...

Thirty White Helmets.

All lives are precious and valuable.

A child, even if he is not my son, is like my son.

I cannot explain it.

As an example, I'll tell you a story that happened to us in Aleppo.

Two barrel bombs were dropped in the Al-Ansari area.

The first one left a number of people wounded,

but the second barrel bomb killed a lot of people.

We went into the area.

It was like a small village made of ten houses,

and all the buildings had been leveled to the ground.

On that day, our work was very hard

and we worked for about 16 hours.

I thought that I was searching under the rubble

for a baby that had died.

But all glory is to God.

We were not meant to leave the area without hearing a sound.

When I heard the sound of a baby...

...my feeling was indescribable.

This gave us renewed strength to continue to work.

It gave us hope that some people were still alive.

After 16 hours under the rubble,

a baby less than a month old, still alive...

under the dust...

under the ceilings that had fallen on him...

We called him the miracle baby.

The baby was one week old and at that time my son,

Abdul Hameed, was almost two weeks old.

I don't know how it came to my mind, but I imagined that this was my son.

And I started to cry.

I couldn't hold it in,

and all my colleagues started to cry.

The hope is that you guys will convey the information you're learning

to other White Helmets in Syria.

We are under a lot of pressure right now to train as many people as we can.

God willing.

Today, we will review listening devices

for locating people trapped under the rubble.

Can anybody hear me?

Don't move.

If you can't hear anything, move the position of the sensor.

It's a hard feeling, that you are away from your family...

but life requires sacrifice.

So now we are sacrificing a whole month to gain expertise.

This training course means that we'll gain a lot of experience.

Our job depends on speed and accuracy

to be able to save lives

and extract victims from under the rubble.

Is anybody here from Hayyan?

Two White Helmets were killed from there.

Guys, Marwan and Ahmad Daboul were killed.

And their brother is injured.

The three are all White Helmets from Hayyan.

-Today? - Yesterday.

All White Helmets are targeted.

We're all targets.

We were training on the ropes when they sent us the news.

Read the opening chapter of the Qu'ran for their souls.

May God accept them.

Everyone knows the truth about Syria,

but no one's been able to stop the killing and fighting...

or stop the bloodshed and the massacres that are being committed.