LONDON: More than 346 people killed, 1,500 injured and more than 13 hospitals hit. With every hour that passes, the casualties mount.
Seven years into Syria’s relentless civil war, the statistics sound horribly familiar, but for doctors in Eastern Ghouta, and many more denied entry to supply much-needed support, the crisis has never felt more acute.
“There’s no access at all, not even the birds can fly over Ghouta now,” said Dr. Ghanem Tayara, chairman of the Union of Medical Care and Relief Organizations (UOSSM), which operates medical centers in locations around Syria, including Ghouta.
“What’s needed now is to stop the military operation completely and open a corridor to let aid into the besieged areas,” said Tayara, a GP in Birmingham in the UK.
“We have sent numerous messages to the regime requesting permission to go in and help with the casualties (but) have been completely ignored. They want to make life unbearable for everybody inside, so any support is rejected.”
On Sunday, Russian-backed regime forces stepped up efforts to secure the last major rebel stronghold in Syria. Since then, military aircraft have hardly left the skies. Barrel bombs, shells and surface-to-surface missiles rain down indiscriminately on the 400,000 residents of Eastern Ghouta, who fear their desperate plight goes unheeded by the world outside.
“People feel abandoned,” Aous Al-Mubarak, a civil society activist based in Eastern Ghouta, told Arab News. Speaking over WhatsApp messenger, he said: “There is utter disappointment here at the general silence of the world, and the weak attitudes toward the massacres and horrors that people have experienced.”
Doctors, sickened at the sight of more suffering among a population debilitated by years under siege, wonder why they should look up from their work to discuss the daily horrors they witness.
Mohamad Katoub, advocacy officer for the Syrian American Medical Society, said: “It’s hard now to convince doctors there to make another testimony … they say, why should I? Will this bring any accountability, or any justice?”
Another contact in Ghouta approached by Arab News said they were tired of talking to the media while people are being killed.
“People are very worried that the current situation might continue for days, or perhaps even weeks or months,” Al-Mubarak said. Everyone fears a repeat of Aleppo, which fell in December 2016 after government forces laid siege to the former rebel stronghold, maiming hundreds and torturing or disappearing many more.
Two weeks into a sustained air campaign by Syrian and Russian forces, residents of Eastern Ghouta are bracing themselves for a ground offensive that threatens a repeat of these atrocities, and the many others marking the chapters of this brutal war, in Homs, Hama, Darayya and other devastated areas.
“They didn’t have the stamina for this,” Afif Ahmed, a merchant from Ghouta told The Guardian newspaper. Speaking from the ruins of his shop, where his family has sought shelter since Sunday, he added: “Iran and Russia do. At least they don’t abandon their friends.”
Speaking to Arab News ahead of his trip to Syria next week, Tayara, the doctor, said the situation in Ghouta is “beyond description.”
“It’s dire, it’s horrible, it’s horrific.” He doesn’t know what else can be said to elicit a genuine response from the international community.
Tayara is not the only one struggling to find words to describe the death and destruction. On Friday, UNICEF released a statement that was blank except for a single sentence: “No words will do justice to the children killed, their mothers, their fathers, their loved ones.”
Since then the carnage has continued, with the casualties piling up. Those able to find shelter cower in underground bunkers and bombed-out buildings, often with little or no access to food, water or sanitary facilities.
The Syrian American Medical Society lost connection with one of its medical facilities for five hours on Tuesday during an intense bombardment. “All the staff and patients were stuck in the emergency shelter and for hours we heard nothing. We were really nervous,” Katoub said.
For others, there is no escape. “The bombing and barrelling is completely random. Children are trying to hide, but there’s no safe space for them ... casualties lie under the rubble for hours because medical staff can’t get to them,” Tayara said.
UOSSM is monitoring the destruction and recording the body count at each obliterated clinic. “The time will come when we have to present it to the courts, or when the international community wakes up and wants to bring people to justice,” Tayara said.
“This is really a systematic slaughtering of the Syrian people in front of the eyes of the international community, there’s no doubt about that.”
UN secretary general António Guterres has described life in the Damascus suburb as “hell on earth” and warned that “a human tragedy” is unfolding. But the bombing continues and help remains out of reach.
Food, medicine, fuel and other basic supplies are increasingly scarce. Since the beginning of 2017, only 10 aid convoys have made it through, barely enough for 10 percent of the population, according to Katoub.
“It’s hard to decide who gets this aid and who doesn’t when the whole community is in need.”
“Pediatricians have to choose which babies get milk and which don’t. It’s an impossible decision.”
Meanwhile, hospitals are being systematically targeted. “There are no emergency services, just basic ones. Only the small field hospitals are left,” said Majid Al Asemi, operating director of Acting for Change International, an NGO operating in Syria.
Médecins Sans Frontières said that 13 of the medical centers it supports in the affected areas were hit between Monday and Wednesday, and supplies of blood bags, anaesthetics and intravenous antibiotics have run out.
Dr. Ahmad Dbis, UOSSM head of safety and security, said people are afraid to go to hospital with their injuries, but medical staff refuse to leave, despite fears they will be targeted. “They feel it is their duty to stay there and deliver services,” he said.
Nowhere in Ghouta is safe. Last week the line was cut while Dbis was on a call with an associate based in Ghouta. “I could hear the bombs in the background. Thirty minutes later, I found out he was killed.”
Soon, he says, there will be no respite for the injured. “If this continues for one week, all the medical facilities will be destroyed and many others will be dead.”