Sunday
Sep092012
Syria 1st-Hand: Darayya After the Mass Killing --- "The Stink of Death" (Di Giovanni)
A funeral procession in Darayya in August, days before the deadly regime attacks
Two weeks on, Darayya still stinks of death. A poor Sunni suburb south of Damascus, it had been well known for furniture-making, and for its peaceful resistance before the conflict. Now it is a ghost town of shattered glass and broken graveyard walls, bombed vegetable shops and decapitated blocks of flats. Rank rubbish is piled on corners, uncollected. There is the unmistakable smell of rotting corpses that have not yet been removed from houses. A lone bicyclist makes his way awkwardly through the rubble and debris.
The town is still and lifeless.