A Bosnian citizen and his family are asking for help from Bosnian authorities to get them back home as they are stuck in the Golan Heights, at the Syrian-Israeli border, amid the conflict in southeast Syria.

Issam Al-Hawamda, 57, is a Bosnian citizen born in Al-Harra, Syria. He returned to his birthplace little before the Syrian conflict began.

Now he is trying to get his wife, his 11-year-old daughter and two sons, aged eight and five, out of the country and back to Bosnia.

The family had to flee their home but they made it as far as the Golan Heights. N1 managed to get in touch with Al-Hawamda via social media.

“The problem is in the southern part of Syria, where intense battles between the Syrian army and the opposition are taking place,” Al-Hawamda said.  

“Syria’s army is supported by Russian airplanes and they are conducting strikes against this part of the country,” he said, adding that civilians are mostly the victims of these attacks.  

“Those people run wherever they can. Most of them went toward the Jordanian and Israeli border,” he said.

Al-Hawamda’s family went for the Israel border, as it is closer. They traveled to a village named Brega.

“As I am a citizen of Bosnia and Herzegovina, I ask of Bosnian authorities to take me out of here, across the Israeli border, which is where I am. I have established contact with some friends in Bosnia and they are helping me,” he wrote to N1.

N1 also contacted the Association of the Social Congress of Syrians in Bosnia, whose President, Sherif Hakimi, said he knows Al-Hawamda and is familiar with the case.  

“We have very little information on him,” Hakimi said. “The last information we got is that he was in his birthplace in Syria. We lost contact with him, but we are trying to establish it again,” he added.

Bosnia’s Foreign Affairs Ministry has, at the time of writing, not answered questions about Al-Hawamdi’s case and the steps it could take to help him. The Bosnian embassies in Jordan and Israel also did not answer.