BEIRUT: The air strike hit Syria’s eastern Ghouta on Wednesday, three days into a massive bombardment.
Soon afterwards, rescuers pulled four children from the building, but their father was killed and they were now orphans. A neighbour, Mohammed Abu Anas, helped to dig through the rubble and then ran for medical aid through battered alleyways with one of the children bleeding in his arms.
“There is fear and anguish among people here, there are hundreds of martyrs and injured,” he said.
Syria’s President Bashar al Assad wants to take back eastern Ghouta, an area of farmland and towns just outside Damascus that represents the opposition’s biggest remaining enclave near the capital.
His government and its ally Russia say they try to avoid civilian casualties in their air and artillery strikes on the district, which they say are needed to prevent rebel mortar fire on Damascus.
But the shellfire, rockets, air strikes and barrel bombs that have hit eastern Ghouta since Sunday night constitute one of the most intense bombardments in seven years of war and have killed more than 300 people so far.
The little boy dug from the rubble, blood trickling from cuts on his face, survived the attack.
His sister, also alive, was slung over the shoulder of a rescue worker, her face and head scarf white from dust.
Two other siblings also survived. The Santiha family had already been torn apart by bombing.
Two years ago, the children’s mother was killed in their home in Jobar, a district where eastern Ghouta meets Damascus.
Wednesday’s air strike killed their father, Majid Santiha, and his body was carried away on a stretcher.
Their uncle came to the medical centre where they and the body of their father were taken. He will now raise them.
Nearly 400,000 people live under siege in eastern Ghouta according to the United Nations, the danger from bombs compounded by shortages of food and medicine.
“We’ve barely eaten since yesterday. I ate rotten food. There are no goods left in the shops. We bought two small tins of cheese and we got seven flat rounds of bread today,” said Bilal Issa, 25.
The food is shared with his mother, his wife and his three siblings.
When the rockets started to fall right outside his home, Issa and his neighbours started to dig through the basement of their building to create a shelter.
They lifted the floor tiles to excavate a hole with spades in which grown men can now stand upright, pulling out the earth with buckets.
The air strikes cause massive plumes of smoke that hang over the neighbourhood. The sound of warplanes fills the sky. “Whoever leaves his house or leaves the shelter can be considered dead,” said Issa. — Reuters
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