ABCNews.com(NEW YORK) — A Syrian media activist living in a besieged Damascus suburb said residents there feel like they are living in a nightmare — describing nonstop bombardment that was clearly audible as he spoke with ABC News.
“Every day people die,” Nour, 22, said shortly after a loud explosion was clearly audible in the background in the rebel-held suburb, Eastern Ghouta. He had barely reacted. “Every day people lost their sons or their family. Every day there are kids lost his mother and father.”
Pro-Syrian government forces have pounded Eastern Ghouta for days, killing at least 335 civilians, including 79 children, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group. Nour spoke to ABC News’ Ian Pannell via Skype on Tuesday and requested that his last name not be used out of concern for his and his family’s safety.
“We’re used to it,” he said. “Every day people die — we’re used to it. But people think we are a number, but actually we are human and people, and no one feel what we are suffering.”
Nour has been living under siege for five years and said he had never seen anything like the current barrage — saying residents felt it was like a “nightmare.”
“They want to wake up but they can’t because that’s our reality and that’s what we and suffering from the warplanes every single minute of the day.”
He described an entire family killed the day before. He said people had become “used to” the daily death and carnage.
To U.S. President Donald Trump and the rest of the world, he said his message was: “We are not just [a] number — we are human, we are people who want just to live.”
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