After massacre, Syrian suburb awaits fate The Syrian forces told Um Mohammed they would be back in an hour with her husband and sons, along with the other men they snatched from the basement shelter in the Damascus suburb of Daraya. Instead, she said, they shot them all. Now the matriarch fears President Bashar al-Assad's loyalists could return for another round of killing, with no one willing or able to stop them. "We are all scared because there are a lot of rumours they will attack Daraya again," she said tearfully. They keep saying it's not finished yet. Daraya's continuing anguish says much about the evolution - or regression - of Syria's 18-month-old conflict and the world's attitudes to it. More than a month after what local people say was the massacre of at least 500 people, the town is in a ghastly limbo, still surrounded by regime forces and aware that another blow could fall at any time with hardly anyone watching. When 108 people were slaughtered in the central Syrian district of Houla in May, it was widely talked of as a possible turning point in international attitudes to what has now become a war; when several times that number were reported dead in Daraya over several days in late August, it triggered a brief round of condemnation - and then near-silence. As a diplomat who covers Syria put it: "It's like the Syrian conflict has become something with which the international community can live." The Daraya massacre was among the bloodiest episodes anywhere during the Syrian conflict. It was deplored by both enemies and supporters of the Assad regime, although, as ever, claims about who was responsible diverged sharply. The state news agency said the armed forces had "cleansed" Daraya of "remnants of armed terrorist groups who committed crimes against the sons of the town." In a broadcast excoriated online by many Syrians, the pro-regime al-Dounia television station interviewed victims of the attack as they lay dying, proclaiming the violence to be in the cause of "freedom" - the narrative of a government that denies targeting civilians and claims it is the victim of a foreign-backed terrorist plot. However, residents said regime forces - angered by rebel Free Syrian Army attacks on their positions and a nearby military airport - first shelled Daraya intensely then sent in troops and members of the notorious shabbiha militia, who went from house to house looting and killing. Many other people were arrested, taking to more than 700 the tally of residents of the area whom activists say are now detained or missing. One local man, known as Derawi, said two of his brothers had been taken by the regime for allegedly not reporting an FSA arms cache near their house. "They don't even know what a weapon is," Derawi said, adding: "This suffering will make the people more determined to get rid of Assad." Activists see the detentions - mainly of young men - as part of a wider government effort to collectively punish Daraya. Other sanctions include denying the suburb civic services and harassing, robbing and beating residents at official checkpoints. "It's a plan that the regime won't leave any future for this area," said Abu Kinan, a local opposition campaigner. Weeks after the massacre, the quiet streets of Daraya seemed a place not yet dead but not quite living either. While the bodies had been buried and the streets cleaned, the trauma was evident in shell-shattered buildings, bullet-ridden shop shutters - and, most chillingly, the long mounds of what people said was a mass grave holding hundreds of bodies. Once noted for its grapes and fine furniture, the area is now a microcosm of an initially-peaceful revolution in which regime atrocities have stoked war and a desire for revenge. Abu Kinan said a shabbiha member had been captured the previous day; asked what had happened to the militiaman, he pursed his lips and replied: "I guess that he's dead already." As Daraya residents wait to see if worse is still to come, they do so with a sense of resignation and abandonment that had begun to settle before the August killings and has been intensified by them. People criticised western powers for not doing more to help save the life of Ghiyath Matar, an activist detained and killed just over a year ago after he gained a high profile through non-violent protests that involved giving flowers and water to government soldiers. Ambassadors to Syria including Robert Ford of the US came to Mr Matar's wake, but people in Daraya - like many other Syrians - expected more from international powers than just sympathy and outrage. "All around the world they were talking about helping us," said a local government worker who asked to be known as DD. But all the help we were promised, we never saw anything.