TRAGEDY OF EASTERN GHOUTA.
BEIRUT • The last of the messages from inside the besieged Eastern Ghouta neighbourhood of Hammouriyeh came in the dead of the night on Wednesday. “More than 5,000 people are at risk of annihilation,” the doctor wrote in a breathless text. “Please get our voice out to the world, this might be the last message I’m able to send.
“The wounded are in the streets and the planes are targeting anything that moves,” he said. “The regime forces came from the east side. I tried to escape but I couldn’t. I witnessed an entire family getting killed by an air strike in front of me. I’m by a basement now trying to send this to you.” The internet connection in the town went down shortly after, and by Thursday morning rebel-held Hammouriyeh had fallen. His fate, and that of those down in the basement, is unknown.
The neighbourhood’s residents have borne the brunt of the government offensive on Eastern Ghouta in the last few days, with a relentless onslaught of barrel bombs, mortars and chemical strikes intended to leave them with little option but surrender.
Some 12,000 civilians streamed out of the enclave along “humanitarian” corridors on Thursday, as rebel defences crumbled under the intense campaign of bombing and starvation. State TV showed weary men, women, and children carrying plastic bags stuffed with clothes walking towards government-held Damascus, where a line of buses was waiting. Those interviewed on camera praised the Syrian army and President Bashar Assad and said armed groups had humiliated them and held them against their will. It’s impossible to judge their sincerity, but any comment suggesting the contrary would likely have seen them arrested, or worse. Others in Hammouriyeh decided to instead flee further into rebel territory in neighbouring areas, fearful of arrest by government forces should they be caught.
It is an irony not lost on the opposition that this major defeat — one that will likely mark the turning point in the battle for the muchprized enclave — came on the revolution’s seventh anniversary.
Their peaceful demonstrations that sparked the civil war in 2011 ended in the most violent way imaginable on Thursday.
The Telegraph asked Syrians from both sides of the conflict how many more grim anniversaries they thought their country would mark. The shortest answer given was three.
“And what will be left by the end? Jawad Abu Hatab, prime minister of the opposition Syrian Interim Government, asked. “Absolutely nothing.”
“The tragedy just repeats and repeats on an endless loop and each time we lose a bit more of our humanity.”