More than 30 UF students gathered on Turlington Plaza to host a candlelight vigil for the dead and injured students of Aleppo University Wednesday night.
Sameer Saboungi, an 18-year-old UF international studies freshman, organized the event. The vigil, which was part of a movement at universities around the world, honored the more than 80 people who died at the university, Saboungi said.
On Jan. 15, two explosions blasted an architecture building and a dormitory holding refugees while university students were taking their final exams, he said. Aleppo University is one of the largest universities in Syria, with about 61,000 students, according to Classbase, an online education information database.
“It could have been me,” Saboungi said. “It could have been you.”
Saboungi said he found the names of 23 victims through activist groups.
Basil Jandali, a 21-year-old third-year UF mechanical engineering student, read the names aloud as members of the crowd lit candles one-by-one to represent the fallen.
Suhaib Harraka, a former student at Aleppo University, spoke at the vigil about his experiences in Syria. Harraka said Syrian secret police brutally beat and tortured his friends in response to their peaceful demonstrations about student arrests. After the secret police came to his home looking for him, Harraka had no choice but to flee.
“Everything was taken away from them,” said Riham Hamed, a 22-year-old UF statistics senior, “their homes, their food, their water.”
Renato Barreda, a 21-year-old UF history and political science senior, lights a candle in remembrance of dead and injured Syrian students during a vigil Wednesday night.
