DAY 908 - SEPTEMBER 2, 2013
Hundreds are killed in a chemical attack in the East Ghouta region of Damascus, most of them civilians. Scores of videos surface showing women and children suffering from respiratory failure, thereby corroborating the belief that Sarin gas was most likely the agent released. John Kerry and David Cameron bang the war drums, citing Assad crossed US President Barack Obama's "red line" with the biological attack. But it has little effect as both US and UK governing bodies ultimately reject intervention proposals. Syrian rebels make a push towards Latakia, Assad's hometown and government stronghold, causing hundreds of Alawites to flee to the south. In Beirut a powerful car bomb kills 21 people in a densely populated, Hezbollah-controlled, shopping area. It is the deadliest attack Beirut has seen in more than eight years. In Al Raqqa, a liberated city in northeastern Syria, jihadist rebels fully expel Free Syrian Army soldiers from the region.
You spend much of your time crying, imagining that your children are dead. As a result you try starving yourself to death. You stop eating all together for two weeks but you can't go through with it. There is still enough optimism in your heart to hang on to life. Recently, loud noises in the Tadmor and Palmyra area have been keeping you awake. A new inmate named Fatma, whose husband is a scientist working for the rebels, tells you that Assad keeps a lot of his biological warfare agents buried deep underground in Palmyra and the sounds we are hearing are from chemical weapons being unearthed and transported. She tells you that there might even be some buried underneath this cell right now. Either way, she says that Assad is not beyond using Sarin gas. He has already slaughtered civilians she says, chemical weapons can do that too—only faster..