Overland to Syria

the Metropolitan Police. Time now for Overland to Syria.

Late night in Manchester. These ambulances are packed with medical

supplies and food, collected by volunteers. When you get there, you

know some will be broken anyway. We are following this charity's journey

overland to Syria. Five ambulances through nine countries. If the world

was doing what it's supposed to be doing, I wouldn't have to risk my

life to do this. What awaits them at the other end is one of the most

dangerous places on earth. The doctor here is stitching up a young

child. We are on the frontline. I never thought we would go this far.

There are snipers on the rooftops. We had to come in these buildings.

Look at that. It's crazy, madness. We really have to help these people.

There is no time to waste. Last minute operations for a journey

to Syria. This group of volunteers from a British charity. The convoy

leader is a father of three who owns a taxi firm in Bolton. The rest of

the 14 include the only woman of the group, a doctor and mother of four.

And a credit advisor from Leicester is one of the youngest on the

convoy. This 25-year-old is a pharmacist. Do you have any nerves?

No, I'm fairly relaxed. It's nice to do something real in life. Have a

break from work. That might sound crazy to a lot of people, that you

aren't nervous. What defines crazy? Is everyone else crazy, who is

working nine till five, not Worrying about 78% of the population living

in dire poverty. I would say that's crazy. I'm not allowed to go because

I have got school. Would you like to go? Yes. There wouldn't be many

students who would rather go to Syria than to school. Once you tell

people about it, once you have been there and played with the kids, been

to refugee camps, you can't forget about it. It's in your head.

Everything else seems pointless. The group are making this trip in

response to the civil war, raging in Syria. It began when President

Bashar al-Assad tried to suppress a popular uprising in March, 2011.

Since then, increasing levels of violence are being used. The UN

estimates more than 100,000 people have been killed on both sides.

Millions have fled. Parts of the country have become so dangerous

that civilians are being left without help from the outside world.

Despite this, small aid convoys like this one are making the journey

overland, packing secondhand ambulances with aid and driving

there. It's 9:30pm. We are just setting off. The journey to Syria.

It will be a long journey. They first head to the port of Dover,

where they face an early set back. How are we doing? Are you still

getting searched? One ambulance is stopped by counterterrorism forces.

They are searching the vehicle and individuals. I don't think we'll

make it in time for the ferry. The group face suspicion that they are

going to Syria to fight, rather than deliver aid. We are not interested

in politics, we are just here to do some aid. Did they take your phone?

Yes, and they asked for my pin code and downloaded everything. That's

what they said. Your names, your beliefs, in terms of your religion,

where you are going. In one respect you can understand, they have a job

to do. But if you've been three times and you get stopped three

times, and it happens all the time, you can feel it is like harassment.

What can you do? It's estimated that more than 100 British citizens would

be fighting with the opposition in Syria and the evidence suggests that

many get there under the cover of charity missions. How do you make

sure everyone is coming for the right reasons? If Joe Bloggs off the

street says he wants to come, he would have to know somebody we knew

and have a face-to-face interview and they'd check Twitter, Facebook,

et cetera, Instagram and make sure, as far as we possibly can, that it

is purely humanitarian. Nothing is 100% foolproof. As long as we do our

checks and we are satisfied, everyone is vetted. The journey

takes in vast stretches of western Europe. It's a stark contrast to

where the convoy will end up. It is day three of the journey and we are

in Switzerland. This is one of the ambulances on the convoy. It's

packed down the side with medical supplies. Needles, boxes and boxes

of painkillers. This is where four people are sleeping. It's very

cramped. If I take you through to another one of the ambulances, this

is number two. At the back here, more medical supplies. Dried food.

Two people are sleeping in here, so it's very cramped. In the back, more

medical supplies, all going to Syria. En route, there's just time

for a wash in a river. We know why people died of hypothermia! I can't

feel my toes. We have got this far. The group are all British, of

Bangladeshi, Pakistani and Indian heritage. They emphasise that they

will deliver aid to civilians, regardless of religion or whichever

side of the conflict they are on. This woman has been on such missions

before to places like Gaza and Pakistan. She says she understands

the dangers they are about to face. Have you thought about the prospect

of people not coming out? People getting hurt or killed? Yes, I think

every humanitarian thinks of the worst, especially when they are

going into Syria. At the end of the day, you take precautions. Nobody is

going in there to get hurt. You could argue that, if you were going

to die, it could easily happen elsewhere. I would rather it be

something meaningful. You have brought your children on one of

these convoys. As a mother, how could you put them in that position,

in that kind of danger? But it was fairly safe where we were and they

were able to go into the refugee camps. It's a summer holiday like

they have never had before, basically. Is it not better to leave

them at home and if you want to put yourself in danger, do that but not

them? I tried to do that. I tried to say myself and my other half would

go with the team but they are four teenagers, they were coming. They

were very hands-on with everything we had to do, even when we were on

the ground on the other side. Every day in the refugee camps, every day

helping with the aid, moving it from one place to another. I think it has

been a really enriching experience for them overall.

Do you feel like your religion makes you fearless? I don't fear anything.

I only fear God. There is nothing to be scared of. What's the worst that

could happen? Serious injury, death, kidnap? If you die while you are

trying to help others in their hour of need, the way we see it is we

will go heaven. This Islamic song is played throughout the trip. It

details the country's suffering. On every convoy this group have been

on, someone has been turned back at the Greece-Turkey border. This time,

Ahmed is stopped. No reason is given. After being held up for 30

hours, the rest of the group get through. It's then a dash across

Turkey. Come on, guys, Syria is calling! Finally, after eight days

of driving, they approached the Syrian border. I just have to drive,

knowing that I take an ambulance that can save lives. It's something

you have to do. So, this is Turkey's border with Syria and this is where

the trip gets very real for everyone involved. They're about to head into

a war zone and hopefully hand over all the aid they've spent months

gathering. The convoy heads on without us.

They're about to take huge risks and we could put them in further danger.

We're in Syria at the moment in the compound... They are filming

themselves on mobile phones. We are emptying and unloading all the

ambulances, taking out all the goods, which we are going to be

handing over to our brothers and sisters in Syria. We have Pot

Noodles, some food, some baby milk, we have medicine, a lot of other

goods, which we bought with your donations. The ambulances themselves

are left behind for local hospitals. They head to a school which is now

housing refugees just over the border. It is priceless. We get out

of the vehicles and we hand it to the children and they are loving it.

You see the smiles on their faces, we have a translator, we were trying

to become their friends. They were saying thank you for the sweets,

they really appreciated it. These schools have all been turned into

refugee camps because there's no education structure in Syria any

more. All of these children live in the schools. When you go inside you

will see there are desks and chairs piled up on the sides in the

corridors because they're not being used any more. Unfortunately this is

just a little snap shot of what Syrian life is like and the fact

there are absolutely no schools running at the moment. There's

absolutely nothing at all. Let me just see the locals.

Still filming everything on mobile phones, four of the team then decide

to make the short but incredibly dangerous journey to Aleppo. The

road is lined with checkpoints, trying to avoid them makes the route

a long and winding one. This city, once celebrated for its ancient

monuments, is now in pieces. The dangers are so severe here that few

foreign aid agencies are even operating. This final journey takes

the convoy right to the front line between government forces and rebel

fighters. We went out with one of the hospital

ambulance drivers and he knows the entire area. Some parts were a bit

hairy. More than a bit hairy? Yeah. We ended up not very far from some

of the frontlines were there were problems. The driver is asking me to

have a look through the. There is a sniper... There is a sniper sat

there. We are actually on the front line, I never thought we would get

this far. The sniper is in one of these buildings up top, we're not

sure exactly where. We are actually in hiding at the moment. Just to let

you know that we actually came out because we brought the hospital

driver with us to go to some of the hospitals and this was one of the

routes we had to take, and that why we are here. There are snipers on

rooftops so we have had to come through these buildings and these

purpose-built holes through walls to avoid walking in the open streets.

To be actually in the thick of it, it was a little closer than I would

have liked to have been. We have ended up in this backstreet where

there are snipers across every side street, every junction the road. If

I turn this around, there are huge sheets that have been put up to try

to avoid snipers being able to see. I just think get through this

situation and get back to doing what we are there to do. We are stitching

up a young child here. We managed to deliver the age to the hospitals

that were receiving a lot of casualties from this frontline. This

brother's been shot by a sniper, the sniper bullet has exploded inside

him and it has caused a lot of pieces of his bone to break. You can

see the bone is shattered and you can see the shrapnel. We have just

been to one of the hospitals in Aleppo. Yes, that was a bomb... The

electricity has gone off, there are two patients in the theatre is about

to undergo surgery and the bottom floor of this hospital is in

complete darkness. I saw a man die, he came in with a gunshot wound to

his face. As medics we are used to blood, guts, death, dying, but it is

the needlessness of it all. It was the saddest thing to see, he had

been brought in on his own, his family didn't know he had died.

There is no dignity in death in a place like that. A British surgeon

who recently volunteered in a hospital in the area for five weeks

said he treated pregnant women deliberately targeted by government

snipers. Our convoy members say they also see evidence of this. The

snipers would have games. One-day they would see people brought in all

shot in the shoulders, another day everyone would be shot in the

ankles, another day they would be shot in the knee caps. Another day

he would just fine they are targeting pregnant women. It's like

a game to them. They are finding pregnant women and they are killing

pregnant women. That their game. The midst of this war zone, normal life

sometimes goes on. But it comes with risks. There was a young child, a

young girl, six-year-old, brought in because she had fallen off a swing.

The surgeon that saw her said it didn't make sense, he asked the

parents, did she fall off the swing? How high was it? Then he found a

bullet in her midbrain. You think what kind of sick person would take

a shot at a six-year-old who's just swinging and having a good time in a

park? We have just had to take a slight detour. As you can see

there's a roadblock here. That's not very good, there are sniper shot

wounds through those. The team tear through sniper lined

streets to get to hospitals. It was slightly kamikaze and really pushing

it. If it is written for me to die there that is why I am going. That's

not what I want to do, I have family at home and children, but if the

world was doing what it was supposed to be doing I wouldn't have to risk

my life and do this. Possibly an airstrike hit this place. There are

still civilians in here. There are children here. Life continues. The

whole mission is a risk from the start, everyone drives in on the

wrong side of the road in foreign countries, through torrential rain

and snow. There's no point in getting all the way to Syria and

getting stuff to where it's not needed. Don't get me wrong when I

say it's not needed, it is, but it is more needed in deeper areas, for

example in Aleppo where we went this time, they've not had aid for such a

long time. This is total and utter carnage, nothing but carnage. There

needs to be a structured way of getting humanitarian aid to the

whole of Syria. This is a massive crisis, more humanitarian safe

corridors need to be committed to Syria and unfortunately we're not

going to wait for a political solution before we're going to do

something. In one hospital they find seven-year-old Mohammed. We found

this kid, his mum passed away, his brother passed away, he didn't have

any family. When the doctors go for lunch and dinner they would take

him. This is the future, look at the smile. These are people's houses

that are just lying reduced to rubble. It is quite difficult to

see. That's better. This was a person's house. Yeah, people's

houses. They have had to break this door, form this door through a wall

just to form a path, a safe path, from inside one end of the building

to the other. People watch this and they probably think these guys are

heroes, they are doing something amazing. But really we've not done

nothing. These people inside Syria lived through that every single day,

that is their life. We really need to help these people big-time. We

need to help them. We have to help them.

The convoy are all home safely. Back to their day jobs and fundraising

for the next trip. The group post videos and pictures on Facebook and

Twitter, showing people what they have seen, what they have lived,

just for a little while. Does it feel a little bit like home now? It

actually has taken over my home from here, England doesn't feel I'm any

more, Syria feels home now. I got an attachment to Syria, as with the

people. Last time I left my house I said goodbye to my mum and everyone

obviously. Obviously I was emotional and I was upset because I didn't

know what was going to happen in Syria, because it's getting more

dangerous. Everytime we go back it seems to be getting worse and worse.

But when I left Syria I found it more difficult to leave Syria and

when I left home. Because I lived with these people and they are my

brothers and my sisters. Another convoy, an even bigger one this

time, plans to leave the UK in a matter of weeks.