Dispatches from Damascus

Brief Updates from Damascus - 2014/04/21

by Eva Bartlett - In Gaza

This morning I heard the familiar shelling sounds of mortar being fired by “rebels” from the Jobar region (usually, sometime from other east-of -Damascus “rebel”-infiltrated areas) upon the city.

Later, scanning the news I read that one civilian was killed and at least two others injured in the at least seven mortar attacks near Dar al-Salam school and al-Zablatani area (not far from where I am staying, less than 1 km from here). The school is in an area not far from where the Peace Delegation stayed a week ago. Damascenes are living under daily attacks by these unguided but lethal mortars.

Later, I talk with a man from Aleppo. When I asked him about the situation there, he replies, “there’s little food, we’re besieged,” he says, making the same hand-motion of being locked in I make when talking about Gaza.

I ask from who. “The ‘rebels’,” he says.

He isn’t jovial like the people I’ve been seeing here in Damascus, who are further removed from the atrocities of the “rebels”.

I ask if I can conduct a formal interview with him. Shakes his head, “they’d cut my head off it I did.”

Ask if he knows people who’ve been decapitated by the “rebels.”

Shakes his head yes, “ay, nam.” Yes.