Omar keeps redialing. But he can't get through. He is nervous and worried. At last, he sees them, his sister and nephews.
"I have not seen them for 4 years, I fought, and they were captured by the militants".
Omar doesn't hold back as tears of joy stream down his face.
The humanitarian corridor of Hamuria works in the same way as the corridors during the liberation of Aleppo. This was not the case when pro-American forces stormed Iraq's Mosul and Syria's Raqqa, attacking them on land and from the air, simply destroying the militants along with the residential quarters where civilians, whom they "saved", still lived.
Igor Konashenkov, Russian Ministry of Defense spokesman: "What can be said about Raqqa, which was liberated by the US-led coalition? The city is in ruins, there is no electricity and no water. The epidemiological situation in the city isn't just serious, it's catastrophic. Neither international humanitarian organizations nor the US-led coalition that destroyed the city pays any attention to it".
People are tired, but not as tired as they were living under the extremists, especially the elderly.
"Militants mistreated us. We did not get any humanitarian aid, they took everything. I even had to scrounge".
"Thanks a lot, thank you! Thank God we managed to escape from the militants".
As teenagers carry or drag children along, adults carry all the belongings that they could fit into a small bag. It's the largest number of civilians leaving the city during the operation carried out in Eastern Ghouta. 3-4 thousand people go through the corridor each hour. Part of Hamuria is still controlled by the militants. The corridor is just a narrow path between the barricades set up by the extremists and the soldiers patrolling the streets.
"These are our 6 children, and I'm pregnant with the 7th. Thank God it will be born far from the militants. I'm happy now".
Tanks with drinking water mark every 100m of the corridor. They drink greedily, children first.
"Now I am sure that everything will be fine and we will return home, the land of Ghouta will help us".
This land has helped all of Syria for centuries. There's a huge oasis in the center of the country. It's one of the capital's breadbaskets, not counting the fact that Ghouta was also the industrial center of Damascus before the war. Now it is successfully being liberated from extremists. The provocation that tried to pin a chemical weapon attack on the Syrian military failed.
"Of course, I'm not an expert in chemical weapons, but people have no burns, ulcers or signs of suffocation. So, allegations of using chemical weapons lack ground".
"I think the information about the use of chemical weapons against us is another provocation in order to completely untie their hands in this war".
This plan failed in Eastern Ghouta. Now it is being prepared in the south of Syria.
Sergey Rudskoy, head of the Main Operations Directorate, the General Staff: "We know that near the city of Al Tanf US instructors have prepared several groups of militants to carry out provocative acts in the south of Syria involving chemical weapons. Furthermore, it will be used to place the blame on government troops. The provocations are supposed to be a pretext for the USA and its allies to strike at military and public facilities in Syria. The question is: Who is the US going to support with these strikes? Jabhat Al-Nusra terrorists and their accomplices rampaging through Eastern Ghouta?"
Moscow and Damascus' large-scale humanitarian operation in Eastern Ghouta, which Washington and its allies didn't conduct in Mosul and Raqqa, is a reality. Moreover, the UN confirmed the absence of violations by the Syrian security forces. And the operation continues.
Anton Stepanenko, Artem Grigoryan, Alexander Kushin for Vesti from Eastern Ghouta, Syria.
