A Picture and its Story: Syrian family shares kisses through fence
After more than a year of separation Syrian refugee Ammar Hammasho was finally, though briefly, reunited with his wife and four children through a chain link fence topped with barbed wire in Cyprus. Falling to his knees, Hammasho, who is from the war-battered city of Idlib, kissed each of his three eldest children through the three metre-high barrier encircling a migrant reception centre at Kokkinotrimithia, west of the Cypriot capital Nicosia. "The policeman told me to wait half an hour to finish the count. I couldnÕt wait, I saw the kids through the fence and I did this," he said, waving his hands over his head. "The kids ran over. I just wanted to see them, for my heart to go back into its place," the 34-year-old construction worker told Reuters on Wednesday. The reunion came on Sunday, just hours after HammashoÕs wife and their children aged 7, 5, 4 and 18 months came ashore with 300 other Syrians in north-western Cyprus after a 24-hour trip on a small boat from Mersin in Turkey, in what was one of the largest mass landings on the island since the Syrian war began. Hammasho knew his family were trying to leave Syria, but didnÕt know precisely when. "When I read on the Internet that about 250 were heading to Cyprus I knew it was them," he said with a broad smile. REUTERS/Yiannis Kourtoglou SEARCH "HAMMASHO REFUGEE" FOR THIS STORY. SEARCH "WIDER IMAGE" FOR ALL STORIES. TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY. Matching text: CYPRUS-MIGRANTS/IMAGE