The massacre town of Daraya is a place of ghosts and questions. It echoed to
the roar of mortar explosions and the crackle of gunfire yesterday, its few
returning citizens talking of death and assault, of foreign ‘terrorists’, its
cemetery of slaughter haunted by snipers. But the men and women to whom we could
talk, two of whom had lost their loved ones on Daraya’s day of infamy four days
ago, told a story quite different from the popular version that has gone round
the world: theirs was a tale of hostage-taking by the Free Syria Army and
desperate prisoner-exchange negotiations between the armed opponents of the
regime and the Syrian army, before Bashar al-Assad’s government decided to storm
into the town and seize it back from rebel control.
Officially, no word of such talks between sworn enemies has leaked out. But
senior Syrian officers spoke to The Independent about how they had “exhausted
all possibilities of reconciliation” with those holding the town, while citizens
of Daraya told us that there had been an attempt by both sides to arrange a swap
of civilians and off-duty soldiers in the town – apparently kidnapped by rebels
because of their family connections with the government army – with prisoners in
the army’s custody. When these talks broke down, the army advanced into Daraya,
only six miles from the centre of Damascus.
Being the first western eyewitness into the town yesterday was as frustrating
as it was dangerous. The bodies of men, women and children had, of course, been
moved from the cemetery where many of them were found; and when we arrived in
the company of Syrian troops at the Sunni Muslim graveyard – divided by the main
road through Daraya – snipers opened fire at the soldiers, hitting the back of
the ancient armoured vehicle in which we made our escape. Yet we could talk to
civilians out of earshot of Syrian officials – in two cases in the security of
their own homes – and their narrative of last Saturday’s mass killing of 245
men, women and children suggested that the atrocities were far more widespread
than supposed.
One woman who gave her name as Leena said that she was travelling through the
town in a car and saw at least ten male bodies lying on the road near her home.
“We carried on driving past, we did not dare to stop, we just saw these bodies
in the street.” She said Syrian troops had not yet entered Daraya...