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American mother in Syria's Ghouta urges Trump to 'do something'

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AFP Douma
Last Updated : Mar 21 2018 | 5:50 PM IST

In the US, her children could have "played under the sun". But trapped in Syria's Eastern Ghouta, Michigan native Deana Lynn and her eight children are living out a nightmare underground.

At 44, US-born Lynn has spent nearly half of her life in Douma, a sprawling town at the heart of the now-infamous Ghouta suburbs, east of the Syrian capital.

Air raids and rocket and artillery fire have pounded Ghouta for more than a month as Syrian troops, their Russian ally and loyalist militia battle to capture the last rebel bastion on the doorstep of Damascus.

Douma, where Lynn lives with her Syrian husband, children, and grandchildren, has been hit hard.

"Now, we're living under bombardment daily, every day. My children are in a state of hysteria," she tells AFP in her living room, where thick green curtains block out sunlight and the boom of bombardment can be heard.

"The children are screaming. The parents are screaming. When the bomb comes close, it's just terrible," says Lynn, in a traditional overcoat and dark brown headscarf.

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Lynn met her Syrian husband at the University of Michigan. They married and had five children in the United States before moving to his native Ghouta just before 2000 -- the year Bashar al-Assad rose to the presidency.

She remained in Douma as protests against Assad erupted in 2011, when rebels captured it in 2012, and after regime troops completely encircled it in 2013.

Lynn says her children, five of whom are American citizens, have been traumatised by a half-decade of siege and strikes that have hit hospitals and schools.

"I tell my children that in America you can play under the sun. You can climb trees. You can have fun. You can go to a playground and be safe," she says.

Not so in Ghouta, says Lynn, where "if you go outside, you just worry that maybe a bomb will fall."
"They're not evacuating. You evacuate for a flood and then you come back. They're kicking them out of their homes. They're fleeing from the hunger, bombing and starvation."

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First Published: Mar 21 2018 | 5:50 PM IST

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