In Syria's rebel city 'they will shoot anything that moves'

Deraa is the centre of the revolt against the Assad regime. Here, a resident of a village on its outskirts describes life under siege

 

guardian.co.uk, Sunday 1 May 2011

Jordanians protest in solidarity with the rebels in the Syrian town
of Deraa. Photograph: Ali Jarekji/Reuters

There was shooting again last night. It has become routine. We haven't slept more than two hours at a time since the shooting began. It stops and then starts again. There is maybe one hour break between shooting.

We are like hostages in our homes. We are surrounded by tanks.

Yesterday we heard another three were killed. They were trying to go out to support the martyrs from Deraa, and the army shot them. They were only young; 18, 19, 22. There were more injured as well – 16 more from here but I don't know how many more nearby, because we can't communicate.

We are distributing all the injured among the houses because we are not allowed to take them to hospitals. We are trying to treat them for gunshot wounds inside the houses, but we don't have any medical equipment, we don't have any anaesthetics or even enough bandages– just basic first aid. Some of them are critical. There is no medical aid at all, and the doctors who try to treat the wounded are being arrested or shot.

We haven't had any electricity for five days now, and no water. There's no gas. We are living by candlelight at night. We don't have any food. We are surviving on the pickled vegetables that we store over the year, that's all we have left to eat. We had tank water but today we heard the army has shot the tanks.

Yesterday the army came to the houses and ordered the women to come out. They handed them loaves of bread and held guns to their heads then made them hand them to people in front of the state television cameras, so it looked like we had food and that everything is fine here. It's not and we don't have any food. I don't know what happened to the bread.

Anyone here who leaves the house is being shot. There are snipers on every building and the army is in the streets. We are just staying inside now, because you know now that if you try to leave the house, you are already a dead man. They will shoot anything that moves. And if soldiers refuse to fire on people, they are executed. These are all the fourth division soldiers in uniform.

They even shot a little girl, Shiraz. She was just playing in front of her house and they shot her. We still have not been able to bury her because they are shooting at the funerals.

Another pregnant woman was killed. She was in her eighth month and they shot her. She was just trying to get to the doctor. This is how brutal they are.

There are still 37 people that we haven't buried. We have had to store them in refrigerators or in the houses. We can't bury them because they are shooting on the funerals. We can't take them to the cemetery, so we built a small cemetery close to my village here where we are burying some of the dead. I heard that in the town centre there are still corpses in the street.

Today the soldiers have been coming from house to house and arresting a lot of the men. We have nowhere to go.

The kids are not going to school. They are afraid, of course, but I am telling them the truth, that we are doing this for freedom. We have been 40 years without freedom under this regime and we need to fight. This president is worse than Hitler.

It's dangerous for me to talk on the phone, but we need to do this. We will do whatever it takes for the world to hear our stories and hear what is really happening here.

We need people to know that the rumours that the state television is saying, that there are terrorists and Salafi groups are not true. We are all one family here.

There is no difference between us, whether we are Christian, Muslim, Druze, Shia, Sunni, it doesn't matter. We need people to know this – come and see how the army is killing our children, our women and parents. If the rumours were true, why don't they let the world come in and see?

We want to send our message to the whole world to stand with us. They are sending messages from the UN and the EU, and we thank the countries that are standing with the Syrian people for what we are asking for. But we need more help from the Arab leaders to have the courage to stand with us.

We need an investigation into the killing. We need people to see with their own eyes what is happening here.

We want to thank all the European countries and the US and the UK and we ask the Russians not to stand with the regime by supporting them and supplying them with weapons.

We also want to thank the King of Jordan for keeping the mobile phones from Jordan open, which has been the only way we can communicate.

We don't need anything, but a safe passage out of here and for the world to hear the truth. Thank you for listening to our story.

The resident was speaking via satellite phone to Lauren Williams in Beirut