Marc, Abu Mohamed, killed in their homes by mortars, we haven't left. Anyway, where would we go?"

The government considers Berry Place a strategic area because it provides access to the capital's central Abbasid Square. If the rebels took the square, they could take the heart of Damascus.

So residents of Berry Place have found themselves trapped, trying to go about their lives in the crossfire.

"When the bombing starts, we tell the children to come inside, and when it calms down, they return to the street," al-Masri said.

"We can't keep them locked up," she adds, insisting she will stay "so long as the army is here."

For Wafic Kamshi and some of his Christian neighbors, the situation is even worse.

"I live between the army and the Free Syrian Army," he said.

Helives just east of Berry Place, in a no-man's-land in Jobar that nearly no one enters.

He works as a taxi driver near Abbasid Square, but rides his bicycle to work each day for fear a car could attract the snipers' attention. Sharpshooters riddled a vehicle with bullets near Kamshi's home, where it still lies abandoned.

Seven months ago, Kamshi was injured by a sniper while he was sitting in front of his home.

"I don't know where the bullet was fired from, but it hit me in the back and it came out from my stomach," he said.

After he was discharged from hospital, however, Kamshi returned to the home where he was wounded.

"In three years, I've gotten used to the war and the bombing doesn't even stop me sleeping now."

But