Photos: Syrian family sifts through old ammunition for a living

Maaret Msrin, Syria: In a scrapyard in northwest Syria, nine-year-old Malik lifts and drops neutralised mortar shells into a neat pile to help his family eke out a living after fleeing war. Metres away, a younger child walks unsteadily, an empty missile in his arms, on his way to throw it on a heap of scrap metal.

On a break, Malik and two other children rest inside a rusty old truck, clutching empty mortar shells in their hands. Malik's father Hassan Jneid, 37, runs the scrapyard in Syria's last major rebel bastion of Idlib with his brothers. "Weapons of war that used to bombard people have now become a means to make a living," said the father of four near the town of Maaret Misrin in Idlib province.

More than four years ago, Jneid, his brothers and their families came to the area after they were forced to flee regime bombardment on their hometown of Latamneh in Hama province further south. Before they fled, Jneid had long worked collecting and selling scrap metal - mostly corrugated iron sheets, rusting old cars, and water tankers.

But when he and his extended family set up a new scrapyard in Maaret Misrin, he found himself adding a new item to his inventory list. The junkyard soon became a harbour for ammunition left behind by endless rounds of fighting in the region between regime forces and their jihadist-led rebel opponents.

"When I came here I found a new addition to the trade - rockets fired by the regime that had not yet exploded," said Jneid. Fifteen adults and children now work in the yard, but adults take on the more dangerous jobs, including dismantling unspent weapons, he said. Sometimes people in the area call up after finding unexploded ordnance near their homes because they want to sell them

But the family also sometimes heads out to areas from which they know opposition fighters have bombarded regime fighters to pick up empty shells or machine-gun bullets. Jneid said his team dismantle any unexploded ammunition where they find it, extracting any explosive, before transporting it safely back to the yard to sell.

"We get rid of the danger first, then we sell the metal on to manufacturers," he said. "Some is used to make heaters, while some more is taken on to be melted down to make rebar for construction." Quarries buy up the extracted explosive to blow up rocks, he said.

Over the years, repeated regime military campaigns have chipped away at the surrounding Idlib region held by Syria's former Al-Qaeda affiliate. But a ceasefire since March 2020 has largely held, offering respite to the region's some 2.9 million inhabitants, of whom two thirds have been displaced from other parts of the country.

Abu Ahmed, another worker at the yard, said the workload was highest during the fighting. "There's loads of work during military campaigns, then less when it calms down," said the former army officer. The United Nations says landmines, explosive remnants of war, and improvised explosive devices are still widespread in Syria, and put the lives of millions of people at risk.

It says children who pick up dangerous objects, agricultural workers who dig up their land, and people on the move after being displaced by war are particularly vulnerable.

In the yard, Jneid's nephew, 10-year-old Abdelkarim, held up a selection of empty shells. "We play between the cars, and we also sift through the shells," he said. He said he and his cousins wanted to help, even if they were "scared one could blow up".

As Syria's war enters its 11th year, Abdelkarim is one of around 2.4 million children out of school in the war-torn country, according to the United Nations. But the young boy said he is acquiring knowledge of a different kind. "We've become able to tell apart rockets, mortar shells, machine-gun bullets and cluster bombs," he said. "We get all sorts here."