Another carbomb in Damascus
The mosque in Tadamun was empty, badly damaged by the fighting, and we had to run across the street to avoid the snipers’ fire and reach the blood stained prayer’s hall. Copies of the holy Koran, some riddled with bullets, were scattered on the marble floor. And I was told by a security guy from the local defence unit that the salafi insurgents had set up a sharia court in the mosque, where several people were supposedly tortured and executed. Then we heard the blast. I thought it was a mortar shell but seconds after we learned via a mobile phone it was a car bomb, no more than 500 metres from where we stood. So I rushed to the scene and got there before the ambulances. No other vehicle in sight, no risk of a second strike, so I began to shoot with my Canon. People screaming. Black smoke and flames billowing from what was left of the exploded car. Militiamen weaving pistols and AK 47. Someone was dragging a dead man with no legs in the street: his severed limbs were later found under the rubble of a small shop. I climbed on the roof of a partly destroyed building. There are no police stations or military targets around, so the blast was ment to kill and maim the civilians. Deja vu. I can’t confirm the official toll of 7 dead and 15 wounded: althought there was a lot of blood all around the place I only saw one corpse, and local residents had a count of three victims, among them a child.
Rebel forces are still waging a fierce battle with the Syrian army in Tadamun, an impoverished Damascus neighborhood not far from the city center. The local defence units claim to control some half of the overcrowded district, but snipers and random mortar fire are hitting almost on a daily basis. The conflict seems to have reached a stalemate, with the army holding the cities and the insurgents still rooted in the suburbs and in the rural countryside.
PS. There is blood on my shirt. I am told to wash and rinse with cold water. So I find myself late at night bent on the sink of my hotel’s room, while the Bbc is counting another death toll in Nairobi. And whose blood I am trying to wipe out? Could be of the dead man with no legs. Or spilled from that child who was playing in the street.
