Constant fear
In Syria’s Ghouta, shelters are tombs for the living
There have been many goodbyes in eastern Ghouta — more than 600 in the past two weeks. That is the estimated number of civilians killed in the Syrian military’s offensive to recapture the region adjacent to the capital, Damascus, under opposition control for nearly six years.
There are even more screams — muffled cries that the world hardly hears, in part because violence in Syria has become so commonplace and cease-fires ignored.
Thousands have been huddling in basements and underground shelters across the sprawling eastern Ghouta region, hiding from the horror raining down from Syrian army jets that almost never leave the skies.
The Associated Press spoke to a number of residents living under the assault. They described damp, mostly unhygienic conditions in basements and tunnels where dozens or sometimes even hundreds in a single shelter spend hours and often days on end, in constant fear that the blasts outside could crush their refuge. They declined to share photos, fearing they would expose their locations to air strikes, which have targeted the underground shelters and tunnels.
A 30-year-old teacher and mother of a 22-month-old child recalled the first time hearing an earthshaking airstrike above her shelter.
“I froze. I was in shock and didn’t know what to do. Do I run? Where to? Do I sit still? Where do I go? It was unbearable.”
“It is not really a matter of choice. It is the closest place considered safe. But it is not safe. The barrel bomb sometimes lands at the shelter. Either at the door or inside, injuring or killing many,” she said. Like some of the others the AP spoke to, she spoke on condition of anonymity, fearing Civilians gather near a convoy of vehicles of the Syrian Red Crescent in Douma, eastern Ghouta, a suburb of Damascus. Desperate for food and medicine, Syrian civilians in the war-ravaged eastern suburbs of Damascus hoped for relief Monday as a 46-truck aid convoy began entering the rebel stronghold, the first such shipment in months.
eventual retaliation if they survive the offensive.
She and others mostly expressed frustration at the world’s silence at yet another mass killing that will inevitably lead to the forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of residents of eastern Ghouta, as has happened in similar assaults elsewhere in Syria.
Rebels in eastern Ghouta have survived years of siege but now are succumbing to a tried and tested military tactic of siege compounded with overwhelming bombardment.
The Syrian government and its backer Russia appear determined to seize the region, adding it to the latest series of victories that have consolidated President Bashar Assad’s hold on power seven years into the conflict.
Proposed truces and ceasefires have failed to stop the war machine. The Syrian rebel groups have refused to surrender, vowing
to fight to their last man, saying they are defending their hometowns.
Known for its green fields and vegetable gardens that fed the capital and its residents, the once fertile eastern Ghouta is now a hell on earth.
The United Nations said 15,000 people have been reportedly driven from their homes in January, the majority staying in shelters and basements around Ghouta.
Basements have served as safe havens in other opposition-held cities and towns facing intense government bombing.
But in Ghouta, which has been under siege since 2013 and was hit even before that by government attacks, rebels have built an extensive network of tunnels. New buildings have been erected with basements, often linking the tunnel grid.
Rescuers said 18 people were
killed, including women and children, in the basement of a building hit by an airstrike in Hazeh. It took rescuers 10 days to bring out the dead from under the rubble.
The teacher lives in Douma, the area’s largest town, home to an estimated 120,000 people and one of the most active front lines. She said she is afraid for herself and her family if the government retakes her hometown, but also fears the rebel factions who control the area and tolerate little criticism.
“Regrettably there is no voice for the civilians here. We can’t speak our mind or speak for the civilians. We can’t stand up to the factions and (say) tell me how did you let us get this far,” she told AP in a series of text messages, most of them recorded while she lingered in the shelter with her son. “We could have changed plans long time ago. Now, we don’t know where we are going.”