Mortar bombs make every trip out a ‘game of Russian roulette’

The random nature of mortar bomb attacks make even accomplishing simple tasks difficult in the Syrian capital.

An injured Syrian man receiving first aid at a hospital in Damascus on April 13. According to SANA, two mortar shells landed in Damascus' Beirut Street and hit a bus, which allegedly led to the death of a girl and the injuring of 22 people. EPA/SANAShow less

Beirut // In Syria’s capital, a recent surge in rebel mortar bomb attacks has been met with a mixture of fear and resignation, with residents saying that every trip out of their home is a “game of Russian roulette”.

As rebels push back against regime efforts to maintain control of Damascus in the run-up to a presidential vote in June, locals are braced for even more violence.

About 60 mortar bombs were fired by rebels into districts of Damascus on Friday, according to an aid official involved in monitoring violence in the city, saying it was the highest number in a single day since the uprising began.

Most of them fell on the pro-regime district of Jaramana — home to many Druze and Christians — and Dwela, near to the historic Bab Touma, a popular tourist attraction before the uprising.

But there appears to be a large degree of randomness as to where the mortar bombs land. The day after the Jaramana attacks, on Saturday, two bombs fell in Tishreen park, a place in which Damascenes like to stroll, away from the traffic and pollution. The previous day, Thursday, four mortar bombs landed in Abbaseen Square, a busy traffic intersection and the eastern gateway into city. The areas being targeted are all under government control.

“The mortars are reaching everywhere now, not just in the suburbs but also the city centre, people are afraid, there is a sense that you cannot be safe anywhere, as if every trip out is a game of Russian roulette,” said Abu Jasim, a 34-year-old governmental worker who lives in a basement flat in Damascus.

By the standards of Syria’s war, marked by atrocities in which hundreds of people are killed at a time, and cities have been demolished by regime air strikes and artillery barrages, the destruction caused by rebel mortars is small.

But the death toll is mounting.

A mortar attack on April 3 killed six children and wounded 16, according to Sana, the state news agency.

A university student, a factory worker, a police officer and civilians have also been reported killed and wounded in mortar attacks in Damascus this month, according to the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

There are no independent casualty figures, with human rights organisations, including the UN’s human rights team, banned by the Syrian authorities.

Central Damascus has been spared the massive destruction of nearby rebel-held neighbourhoods, such as Yarmouk and Qaboun, but despite the regime’s solid hold on the most central parts of the city, and its fervent desire to project normality in the capital, today’s conditions would likely have shocked residents into hiding a year ago.

Now, desensitised by a brutal conflict in which more than 150,000 people have been killed, and many more injured or forced to flee their homes, the prospect of death randomly arriving from above is something at least some Syrians in Damascus have learnt to shrug off.

“We have to get on with life, so we learn not to think about these things and we erase our memories at the end of each day,” said another Damascus resident. “If a mortar falls in one place one day, the next day we will go there as if nothing happened. Mortars are normal now, all of this is normal.”

While mortars have hit central areas of the capital on numerous occasions in the past, rebels have largely steered clear of a concerted use of the weapons — many of them home made and notoriously inaccurate — against areas populated by civilians.

A rebel mortar campaign was started in March last year, only to be aborted after a bomb landed in Damascus university, killing 15 students. That attack seemed to convince rebels that blindly firing mortars into heavily populated areas would do their cause more harm than good, and only alienate them from ordinary people.

That calculus appears to have changed now, a political analyst in the city said.

“We’ve had mortars hit the university’s facility of engineering in this round of attacks but it has not put the rebels off this time,” the analyst said.

“The regime is trying to push the rebels away from the city ahead of the presidential elections, to project its power and reassure everyone that Assad is in control, while the rebels want to remind everyone that Assad still can’t keep them safe, and that the rebels are still there, right on their doorstep,” he said.

President Bashar Al Assad is widely expected to stand for a third term of office in what will be his first ever election this summer, with regime officials insisting there can be a free and fair ballot, despite the war, vast swathes of land outside government control and millions of Syrians displaced.

Mr Al Assad’s two previous terms were endorsed in uncontested referenda. New election rules have excluded most credible opposition figures from standing, even if they wanted to, and the Syrian president is likely to face only token competition for his job.