Feature: Trapped between warring fronts, civilians in Syria's Hasakah struggling to seek warmth, safety, way back home

HASAKAH, Syria, Feb. 7 (Xinhua) -- As clashes flared in recent weeks between the Syrian interim authority and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in the countryside of Hasakah province in northeastern Syria, thousands of civilians fled their villages, carrying little more than blankets, toward the relative safety of the provincial capital.

For many, the journey ended up inside classrooms.

At Saad bin Abi Waqqas School in Hasakah city, desks have been pushed aside to make room for families who escaped fighting near Ras al-Ain, a town close to the Turkish border, in the Hasakah countryside. The schoolyard has become a place for children to play, for the elderly to wait, and for adults to quietly worry about whether their displacement will be temporary or yet another chapter in a long cycle of loss.

"We are reliving everything we went through over the past 13 years," Rima Abdul Rahman, a widowed mother in her 40s who fled the Ras al-Ain countryside with her children, told Xinhua. "Every time there is fighting, it is the civilians who pay the price."

Abdul Rahman now lives in a small classroom with her children. Several times a day, she walks more than 100 meters to fetch water for cooking and washing. She said no food aid has reached her family, and medical services are scarce.

"My son got sick yesterday, and I couldn't take him to a doctor," she said. "We have been without fuel for 15 days. There is no heating, no medicine, nothing."

Winter has made their living conditions worse. Snowfall and freezing temperatures swept northeastern Syria twice in recent days, turning cracked windows and leaking roofs into serious new hazards.

"It rained inside the room like it was outside," Abdul Rahman said. "We wrap ourselves in blankets, but the cold is unbearable."

In the school courtyard, Hilaleh Ali al-Khalil, a Kurdish woman in her 70s from a village near Ras al-Ain, sat holding her young grandson. She said families resorted to burning pieces of old blankets in makeshift stoves to keep children warm.

"The cold we were exposed to was brutal," she told Xinhua. "I am sick, and the children are very young."

Al-Khalil said the fear among displaced families is not just about the cold or the lack of aid, but about the impossibility of returning home at all.

"We don't want to stay here," she said. "We don't have the money to rent houses. Living in schools is not a choice -- it was forced on us."

Her demand, she said, was simple: safe passage back home.

"Open the road so we can return to Ras al-Ain," she said. "We don't want anything else."

Nearby, Alaa Amin, a man in his 50s with diabetes who lost both legs and suffered serious eye damage, sat in a wheelchair watching his young son move across the schoolyard.

"All I want is to go back to my home," he said, as years of hardship and stress had taken a severe toll on his health. "I am disabled and exhausted."

Despite the suffering, Amin spoke of unity rather than blame.

"There should be no difference between Arab and Kurd," he said. "We are one people. We want to live together in one country, without fear."

The UN World Food Programme (WFP) said on Jan. 30 that it was expanding emergency food assistance for families displaced by renewed fighting in northeastern Syria, with more than 165,000 people fleeing their homes in Hasakah province.

The WFP is distributing ready-to-eat meals, food boxes and nutritional supplements to people in need, warning that continued aid depends on donor funding as years of economic strain deepen food insecurity across Syria.

However, a glimpse of hope appeared in late January, as the interim authority and the SDF announced a comprehensive ceasefire agreement, the latest in a series of agreements that have so far failed to bring about the hoped-for peace.

The agreement includes a comprehensive ceasefire and a phased integration of military and civilian structures in northern and northeastern Syria. It stipulates an immediate ceasefire, which has largely reduced large-scale fighting, though both sides have traded accusations of violations. As part of the deal, state security forces have been deployed to various parts of Hasakah province to launch a phased security integration.

It also provides for the incorporation of autonomous civilian institutions into the Syrian state and includes provisions related to local governance and minority rights, areas that remain subject to further negotiation.

For families sheltering at Saad bin Abi Waqqas School, the announcement brought cautious hope, tempered by years of broken truces and repeated displacement.

"We've heard ceasefires before," Abdul Rahman said. "What we want is for the fighting to stop for real, so we can go back to our homes and live like people again."