Abo Bakr al-Haj Ali writes: It was like any normal day: I was at work in Al-Jazeera’s office in the southern city of Daraa. The bureau was housed in a residential apartment block, not far from my family home in the neighbouring countryside.

At 11:35am local time exactly, my colleagues and I heard the roar of a helicopter in the sky. We quickly finished what we were doing and rushed to get out of the building to the relative safety of the street.

I heard the sound of the first barrel bomb land nearby, and after a few seconds a second barrel bomb crashed into the office building. I knew that this was no fluke and that we had been purposefully targeted, most likely for the work we had been covering.

It was an awful, indescribable feeling. I can’t remember much of what happened next. It was a big shock, and while I am certainly no stranger to these deadly devices, I recall being frightened and I quickly fell to the ground.

I couldn’t see anything and the dust and smoke from the debris began to choke me as I struggled for breath. While little oxygen made it to my lungs, a wretched stench began to permeate my nostrils. I’m still not sure what the smell was, but I think it was trinitrotoluene, known more commonly as TNT. [Continue reading…]