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more about this. hi, jonathan. we re on the golan heights looking into syria from the israeli side of the border. it is an increasingly desperate and potentially dangerous situation. 160,000 refugees have fled the fighting in southwestern syria in just the last few days. look at this tent encampment just across the border into syria. a couple hundred yards from the border some 5,000 or so i would estimate refugees have come here looking for safety, looking for shelter. the israeli government is sending aid in the form of tents and medical supplies and food. as we zoom in here you can see what is a syrian rebel checkpoint at the heart of this. the seven-year ongoing civil war between the syrian government and those rebels. the main fighting is taking place right now some 30 miles from where we re standing in and around the city of dura.
is very hard core shiaa, very loyal to the government. mostly surrounded by the rebels, it is being air-supplied by the syrian government. so this is a hand-in-glove between the relationship, the government and this very nasty militia group. getting to fou a wouldn t have been a problem. and it is not that far. it is not that far. but they don t control the space between these two towns. they have this little pocket here and they have all of this town. but to get there is a problem for them, especially now since the rebels are on alert, and that is how we got out. one night, the fifth night, they decide to move us, they load us in the back of a car. back of a mini van. they leave. they re leaving out this direction, and they re going to do sort of a roundabout way to get there, i assume, because they re leaving in the opposite side of the town. and they got nailed. they ran into a rebel checkpoint, surprise checkpoint. stopped their car.
surrounded by rebels, air supplied by the syrian government. oh, wow. this is a hand in glove relationship between the the government and this very nasty milliate group. getting to foua would have been a problem. and it s not that far. and they don t control the space between the two towns. they have this little pocket here and they have all of this town. but to get there, is a problem for them. especially now since the rebels are on alert. yeah. that s how we got out. one night, the fifth night, they decide to move us, they load us in the back of a car, back of a truck minivan. they leave, they are leaving out this direction and they are going to do sort of a roundabout way to get there i assume. leaving in the opposite direction of the town, and they got nailed. they ran into a rebel checkpoint, surprise checkpoint they weren t expecting.
safe houses and interrogation places, and they kept us blindfolded, bound. we weren t physically beaten or tortured. it was a lot of psychological torture, threats of being killed. they made us choose which one of us would be shot first. and when we refused, there were mock shootings. they pretended to shoot gazi several times. and when you re blindfolded and they fire the gun up in the air, it can be very traumatic experience. and at the end of this, we were being moved to yet another location in the late around 11:00 last night local time. and as we were moving along the road, the kidnappers came across a rebel checkpoint, something they hadn t expected. so we were in the back of what you would think of as a minivan. and as we were driving along the road, the kidnappers saw this checkpoint, started a gunfight with it.