In a special report from the city's Baba Amr district, the BBC's Paul Wood meets those facing the military's shells and mortars
Paul Wood
guardian.co.uk, Saturday 11 February 2012
"Abu Suleiman was working methodically to wrap the body of a seven-year-old girl in a white shroud. He didn't flinch as a volley of mortar bombs crashed down only a street away. He has been preparing the dead for burial since the start of the uprising. Last week he had his busiest day.
Carefully, he folded over the white cloth to cover the girl's curly chestnut hair, matted with blood. He did not clean it off. "If they are killed by a bomb or a bullet, we don't wash their martyrs' blood," he said. He wrote the girl's name on the shroud, Nuha al-Manal.....
We slipped out of the city during a pause in the bombardment. Our cameraman, Fred Scott, had filmed the burial of the little girl, Nuha al-Manal. It took place at night since, they said, funerals were regularly attacked. Even so, it was too dangerous for relatives of the child to attend.
A volunteer ran, stumbling, across the graveyard, with the small body grasped in his arms. There was no time to offer prayers. There was only the rapid scrape of shovels and a burst of gunfire in their direction as she was hurriedly put in the ground. There will be many more such lonely and desperate burials in Homs."
Paul Wood
guardian.co.uk, Saturday 11 February 2012
"Abu Suleiman was working methodically to wrap the body of a seven-year-old girl in a white shroud. He didn't flinch as a volley of mortar bombs crashed down only a street away. He has been preparing the dead for burial since the start of the uprising. Last week he had his busiest day.
Carefully, he folded over the white cloth to cover the girl's curly chestnut hair, matted with blood. He did not clean it off. "If they are killed by a bomb or a bullet, we don't wash their martyrs' blood," he said. He wrote the girl's name on the shroud, Nuha al-Manal.....
We slipped out of the city during a pause in the bombardment. Our cameraman, Fred Scott, had filmed the burial of the little girl, Nuha al-Manal. It took place at night since, they said, funerals were regularly attacked. Even so, it was too dangerous for relatives of the child to attend.
A volunteer ran, stumbling, across the graveyard, with the small body grasped in his arms. There was no time to offer prayers. There was only the rapid scrape of shovels and a burst of gunfire in their direction as she was hurriedly put in the ground. There will be many more such lonely and desperate burials in Homs."
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