With peace on the horizon in Syria, this Christian city grapples with its decision to back the government
MHARDEH, Syria - Shadi Shahdeh, a motorcycle mechanic, was working in his shop here when he heard that a missile had struck his neighborhood along the Orontes River.
He rushed home and found his 83-year-old mother dead, slumped in the doorway. Gone too was his 8-year-old daughter, her stomach torn open by shrapnel.
A few yards up the street were the mangled remains of the rest: his 33-year-old wife and their 6-year-old son and 2-year-old daughter.
"This missile got them all," said Shahdeh, 42. "They were shredded."
The attack on the city, which supports Syrian President Bashar Assad in the country's civil war, came the same day the government and its ally Russia agreed to postpone an offensive
