In a cemetery in Harasta, a city in the besieged Syrian district of Eastern Ghouta, aerial attacks have raised the dead. Despite the acute danger and gruesome scenes, treks to graveyards are unavoidable. With people dying almost daily, a driver is tasked with dropping off corpses at the cemetery, where an undertaker and relatives wait to bury the bodies.
“Many burials take place after sundown since it’s harder for regime planes and their allies to spot small gatherings,” Hosam al-Beiruty, the head of the local council of Harasta, told Al-Monitor. “It wasn't always this way. Harasta used to have big funerals before the war. Many people would attend and a sheikh would say a prayer. Now a body is buried in 10 or 15 minutes by three or four relatives.”
During the latest onslaught on Eastern Ghouta between Feb. 6 and Feb. 8, at least 210 civilians were killed by regime planes and their allies, according to UN Human Rights chief Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein. The graveyard in Harasta wasn’t spared.
The fighting has reportedly calmed since the Syrian regime downed an Israeli plane on Feb. 10. But civilians warn that no place is safe for long in the besieged district, not even graveyards. Along with Harasta, media activists and civilians told Al-Monitor that two other cemeteries have been damaged in the fighting in recent weeks, and seven have been hit since January 2017.
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