A three-year-old girl taught to laugh off the sound of shelling in war-torn Syria has left with her family and started a new life in neighbouring Turkey, her father said Wednesday.
Salwa crossed the border with her parents last week at the invitation of the Turkish state, her father Abdullah al-Mohammed said.
The little girl rose to fame last month after a video was circulated on social media of her and her father laughing at bombardment in embattled northwest Syria.
Her father said he was delighted Salwa would now be able to lead a quiet life in Turkey, away from the “disturbing sounds”.
“Her future here — after she starts kindergarten and then school — will definitely be better than if she had stayed somewhere at war,” the 32-year-old said.
In the video widely shared last month, he asks his only daughter if the whizzing sound they can hear outside is a plane or a mortar.
“A mortar,” the three-year-old answers.
“When it comes, we will laugh,” she says before — at the sound of a blast outside — breaking into a giggle that endeared her to millions.
Mohammed says he is happy he will no longer have to invent games to gloss over the horrors of Syria’s nine-year civil war.
“At least now I won’t have to lie to her,” he told AFP by telephone from the border region of Hatay, where he is now looking for a job.
