Residents of Jubar, a Ghouta suburb on the eastern edge of Damascus, were among the first to rise up against the Assad regime as the Arab Spring swept across the region more than a decade ago.
Jubar was bombed, besieged and starved by regime forces for five long years, until rebel troops retreated from Ghouta.
But for the civilian population, the nightmare continued. Tens of thousands were detained by Assad’s forces, many of them disappearing without a trace.
“Nobody was spared,” says Ayham El Zaw, whose father vanished after his arrest.
“There isn’t a single house where they didn’t kill someone,” he says, standing amid the ruins of Jubar, now a ghost town that was home to a prewar population of 250,000.
“Fathers, mothers, young people – all died under torture,” El Zaw adds. “Many were killed by chemical weapons, many children.”
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Across a bridge, the nearby suburb of Zamelka still bears the scars of a sarin gas attack that took place on August 21, 2013, in one of the war’s darkest hours.
“My family was hit by the gas, they didn’t know what was happening,” says resident Samar Nakchabandi, pointing at the spot where a missile carrying the deadly nerve agenda landed near her home.
“Some went up to the roof, others tried to run down the stairs,” she says. “But everyone was found dead.”
Nakchabandi lost six family members that day. They were among an estimated 1,400 people killed by the regime’s chemical attacks in the Ghouta area.
Click on the player above to watch the full report by Johan Bodin and Mohamed Farhat.
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