In Syria enclave, living too are underground

MEDEIRA, Syria — Every morning, Umm Jamal stirs her coffee as heavy bombardment thuds overhead. This sparsely furnished basement in Syria's Eastern Ghouta has become her home since bombardment made life above ground too dangerous.

Like Umm Jamal, many in the rebel-controlled enclave outside the Syrian capital have been forced to live in spartan basements and makeshift shelters by fierce government shelling.

The mother of two moved underground with her children over a month ago, fleeing bombardment on her nearby home in the town of Medeira.

"While we were here, bombing hit our house and it's no longer suitable to live in," the 56-year-old tells AFP sombrely, dressed in a black robe.

"We haven't stayed in our old home once. We're here day and night," she says.

Close to 400 civilians have been killed since Sunday, when the regime intensified its bombardment of Eastern Ghouta, which has been controlled by extremist groups since 2012.

Umm Jamal and her son, known as Abu Al Foz, have done the best they can to make the bare, cave-like space a home: propping up boards to form rooms and setting up kitchen appliances.

"When the aircraft start flying overhead, our neighbours come and stay here, too. When the bombing stops, they can go back to their homes, but my children and I stay in this basement," she says.

Each of the rare lulls in the deluge of bombs and rockets the regime has unleased on the area over the past few days is a chance for residents to stock up on food and wood.

Umm Jamal uses a small axe to chop the wood she is able to collect near her wrecked house and hastily fills plastic bottles to take back to her underground dwelling.

'No sun' 

The scape is cramped and the logs are stacked under an iron stove which was set up to face a yellow tent which Umm Jamal shares with her two grown-up children, including her daughter who has special needs.

"Now we're living in this tent," her son says. "It's very, very cold — I tried to fix up a stove and bring it into the tent at night so we can stay warm but we started suffocating."

"We sleep here, the three of us, it's very tight," says Umm Jamal. "We live in the cold, under the ground."

The semi-rural area of Eastern Ghouta, which lies on the eastern outskirts of Damascus, has been besieged since 2013 and, while smuggling is rife, finding basic goods has been made more difficult by the escalating air campaign.

In another nearby basement, black-clad women are laying out plates of tabbouleh as the skies rumble from, yet, another wave of air strikes.

One woman squeezes her sister's knee and holds her breath in frozen dread when the roar of the warplanes becomes deafening.

Next door, children are kicking a football in a room furnished with a bed, an old wardrobe and nothing else.

The same scenes are repeated across Eastern Ghouta, where no town has been spared by a barrage of raids that has mostly targeted civilian areas and even hospitals.

In Arbin, Yusra Ali chose to move to the basement of a school.

"I have no medication left," says the 46-year-old woman, who has a heart condition. "We live here with no sun, no wind, short of breath. There is no life in here."