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EscapingRamadi:ChildrenfedsleepingpillstostoptearsCNN.com

Escape from Ramadi: I fed children sleeping pills

to stop their tears
By Nima Elbagir, Raja Razek and Bryony Jones, CNN
Updated 1635 GMT (0035 HKT) January 5, 2016 | Video
Source: CNN
Habbaniyah, Iraq (CNN)Five-year-old Tabarak had
to be given sleeping pills to hush her crying as her
family fled from ISIS.

Story highlights
Hundreds of families are trapped inside Ramadi
despite Iraqi forces' surge to take city back
from ISIS militants
One woman who fled the city says she and her
six children are still haunted by their escape
ordeal, although they are now safe

For months, her mother Nada Saleh had used the

tablets as her only way of getting rest amid incessant
air strikes and battles between ISIS forces in her
hometown of Ramadi and those that would want to
liberate the Iraqi city.
But when the time came to run, Saleh decided to feed
them to her children, including her young daughter, to
calm their panic and stop their anguished cries alerting
the militants.

"I had some sleeping pills remaining that I gave to them so they wouldn't cry and give our hiding place
away," she says.
Saleh and her husband had spent months trying to
survive under ISIS' radar, but the family decided it
was time to get out when sword-wielding men came
calling, and set fire to their home
"As they burnt my house, they pulled us out and
threatened my husband with a sword to his neck,"
she told CNN.
Saleh feared that she, her husband and six children
would be used as human shields in the face of Iraqi
forces' assault on the city.

Hundreds of families have fled fighting

in Ramadi for a camp 25 miles east.

"They wanted [my husband] to move us to the Suffiya

district where they've pushed other families.
"ISIS are hiding behind the families there, using them
to hide from the Iraqi forces. If it wasn't for my

husband, we would still be in there, that could be us."

Saleh's husband managed to escape from ISIS but
like many of the men who have fled Ramadi, he is
now being questioned by Iraqi authorities to establish
whether he had any link to the militants.
The mother-of-six says the moment the family held
hands and walked across the front line returns to
haunt her whenever she closes her eyes.

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EscapingRamadi:ChildrenfedsleepingpillstostoptearsCNN.com

Related Video: Families escape Ramadi as

ISIS is still on the attack 02:06

"I took off my daughter's white headscarf and waved

it as we walked. I kept shouting, 'We're not a threat.'
"In that moment, I thought, 'We're going to die.' I
said the Shahada [the Islamic creed, and the prayer
of the dying] as we walked.
"I thought 'We're walking towards death, or we're
walking towards life,' but either way I had to take the

risk.
"For four days we hid, moving from place to place," she recalls. "Last night we slept in a bombed out
building. The kids were shivering but we couldn't dare light a fire."
Eventually, they made it to Habbaniyah, to a
displaced persons camp built to house those lucky
enough to make it out of ISIS-held territory.

Regions +

Related Video: ISIS tunnels under Ramadi

to evade airstrikes 02:54

Constructed on the site of a "tourist village," many of

the tents at Habbaniya still stand empty; the families
they were meant to hold are still trapped inside the
city, 25 miles to the west.
Iraqi forces, backed by Western air power, drove ISIS
fighters out of the heart of Ramadi last week, but
militants still control parts of the city's eastern
districts.
Iraq says some 1,000 families remain in eastern
Ramadi; the government believes they are being
used to protect the militants.

While she waits to hear from her husband, Saleh and

their children -- still shaking from their ordeal -- can do little but relive their traumatic escape, and worry
about what the future holds.
"How many times, do you think it is possible to die?" she asks. "Even now, hearing a car drive past, I jump. I
think, 'This is it.' We still live with that fear."

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