“The French may want to go home, but that might not be an easy thing,” Lynch says, adding that on the drive into Bamako Wednesday she saw two large convoys of heavy French fighting vehicles heading up the road on the way to Gao.

“They seem to be getting ready for another battle,” Lynch says.

France is anxious to begin drawing down its 4,000 soldiers from Mali. The French foreign minister said Wednesday those troops should begin pulling out in March.

Yet our recent road trip to the city of Gao, center of much of the jihadist troops, revealed suggestions that the area still isn’t secure from the threat of more attacks.

It was just last week that French and Malian forces swept into Gao, beating back the militants from the city, sparking scenes of jubilation from the residents who endured under occupation.

For the most part, though, journalists were unable to get to Gao to report on the fighting or even its aftermath. They were repeatedly blocked from traveling on the only road north to Gao by the Malian army, which cited safety concerns.

So when we saw a chance to make it through, there was no hesitation. We were in the town of Sevare, home to an airfield and a military base, when we learned a convoy of French vehicles would leave the next morning. We were told we could tag along as long as we arrived at the gates of the base by 5 a.m. the next day.

We watched as 61 vehicles – some ready for battle, others acting as lookouts and most trucks loaded with supplies for the troops in Gao – pulled out from the base. We fell in behind, finally able to do what so many other journalists had been unable to: sail through the checkpoints. Still that did not make for easy travel.

The convoy moved achingly slowly at points, covering ground carefully, watching for the enemy and alert to danger that was perceived to be getting worse the closer we got to Gao. We ended the day 160 kilometers short of the city after multiple roadside bombs were discovered up the road.

It meant a chilly, unexpected night sleeping on the ground, under the stars.

The next morning, the wake-up call came in the form of an explosion nearby, smoke drifting across the sunrise. Startled, we looked to the French soldiers nearby who seemed relaxed as they prepared to leave. One even shouted “reveille” to his colleagues. It was a controlled explosion, we learned later, of the two of the mines discovered the day before.

That discovery, coupled with a similar bomb that killed four Malian soldiers days before, suggests the extremists may be engaging in new tactics: Instead of fighting directly with troops, they will become an insurgency, employing guerrilla tactics similar to the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Once we did arrive in Gao, there were evident signs of the damage done by both the occupation and the battle to take it back. Buildings reduced to rubble by air strikes, gas stations closed due to fuel shortages and no electricity for most of the day.

Near a field where the Islamists carried out their amputations in full public view, black signs with white writing still stood: They were the stern reminders that up until last week, Sharia law was the law of the land.

For the residents, those are now difficult memories. One man named Ibrahim Konta says it was like they were in prison for nine months. Now he says it’s as though they’re celebrating independence all over again.

Konta runs a hotel in Gao, but he said the extremists moved in nine months ago, shutting down his business.

“I ran one of the oldest and best hotels in Mali, but there’s been no work for nine months there,” Konta said. “Now that the French have come, we’re cleaning it and getting it ready for customers.”

His main worry now is that the French will leave and what he said is a weak Malian army will fail to protect them, as it did nine months ago when Gao became a city under occupation.

The French, leading the way for soldiers from Malian and other West African nations, have made their way swiftly into cities and town in the north that were taken over by Islamists and Tuareg rebels 10 months ago.

The offensive began earlier in January. Now the French Defense Minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, said the three week campaign has left the jihadists in disarray.

There have been jubilant scenes in the north, where the people are thanking the French for liberating them, but in Bamako, there are some who watch the unfolding events with more caution.

They are the refugees; those who fled their homes when the Islamists moved in and began imposing a harsh version of Sharia law.

Mohammed Ag Sabou came to Bamako from Timbuktu six months ago with his family in tow. He now lives in a house with three other families. For him, there is only wariness and little talk of a lasting peace.

“Realistically, the military will have to stay there for a long time to strengthen security and prevent revenge attacks. There are still lots of Islamists, in the cities, in the mountains, in the desert,” Ag Sabou said.

There are some who cannot contemplate ever trying to find a peace pact with those who invaded their cities and their lives.

At a busy bus downtown bus station, Suleiman Traore stands out. He is wearing a heavy grey jacket with long sleeves in the intense heat of Bamako’s midday sun.

He wears it for one sad reason.

“It is to stop me from seeing that my hand isn’t there anymore,” he said.

Traore was caught by militants last fall in Gao, accused of stealing their weapons.

For that, he said they cut off his right hand.

He rolled up his sleeve to show the stump, and pronounced what he thinks should happen to the fighters who are now retreating under fire.

“The best way to deal with them isn’t to kill them,” he said. “I think they should be mutilated too so they’ll know the pain and the difficulties of living this way.”

There are others who are more optimistic, including Mohammed Ibrahim Yattara. The father of six children he said it was frightening to be in Gao when it was invaded last spring.

“When you see people shooting gunfire in front of your house or threatening you with a gun in front of your children, in front of your wife, that’s a very scary thing,” Yattara said.

Now though he is smiling at the news that the last stronghold of the militants, Kidal, appears to have fallen. Yattara thinks the war is all but won and his country is saved.

“We think we’ll have years, centuries of security and peace.”

The fighters themselves, insist this is just a pause. Analysts suggest this may evolve into a guerrilla war with smaller scale, irregular attacks, similar to Afghanistan.

For those waiting to return home, it may not yet be safe enough. They will watch and wait in their temporary homes, not yet knowing how long they will have to be refugees in their own land.

France sent 3,500 troops to Mali in a rapid campaign to oust Islamists linked to al-Qaeda.

Human rights groups say what appears to be a successful campaign has come at great cost to the country.

Laura Lynch reports from Bamako.

Amnesty Int’l releases #Mali report: army accused of extrajudicial killings of civilians based on “ethnic” appearance.

— lauralynchworld (@lauralynchworld) February 1, 2013

There are nothing but smiles on the faces of the dozen children spilling out of a small apartment in Bamako.

The cramped quarters – with five adults there are 17 in all– are better than what they left behind when they escaped the city of Gao last spring. Mohammed Ibrahim Yattara – father to six of the children –says it was a frightening time.

“Mostly when you see people coming shooting gunfire in front of your house or threatening you with a gun in front of your children in front of your wife I think that’s a very scary thing,” Yattara says.

First, Yattara says Tuareg rebels came, then Islamist militants. Being Christians, he and his family felt like targets –especially when their church was destroyed. He says that was just the beginning.

“Drastically life has changed because when they looted the city there was no bank, no market,” he says. “I mean nothing.”

Today, though he’s smiling at the news that the last stronghold of the militants, Kidal, appears to have fallen. Yattara thinks the war is all but won and his country is saved.

We think we’ll have years, centuries of security and peace,” he says.

Others, though, including the fighters themselves, insist this is just a pause. Analysts suggest this may evolve into a guerrilla war with smaller scale, irregular attacks, similar to Afghanistan.

In a nearby house where Mohammed Ag Sabou lives with his and three other families, there’s not much talk of a lasting peace. He is from Timbuktu and fled when Islamist fighters evicted him from his house.

Realistically, he says, the military will have to stay there for along time to strengthen security and prevent revenge attacks. There are still lots of Islamists, in the cities, in the mountains, in the desert.

And then there are those who cannot contemplate ever trying to find a peace pact with those who invaded their cities and their lives.

At this busy bus station, Suleiman Traore stands out, wearing a heavy grey jacket with long sleeves in the intense heat of Bamako’s midday sun.

He wears it for one sad reason.

“It’s to stop me from seeing that my hand isn’t there anymore,” he says.

Traore was caught by militants last fall in Gao, accused of stealing their weapons.

For that, they cut off his right hand.

He rolls up his sleeve to show the stump, and pronounces what he thinks should happen to the fighters who are now retreating under fire.

“The best way to deal with them isn’t to kill them,” he says. “I think they should be mutilated too so they’ll know the pain and the difficulties of living this way.”

Perhaps the biggest clue to how these refugees really feel about the swift military victories in the north lies in their plans for the future.

They don’t want to return home just yet.

They are waiting and watching, not certain what will come next.

They all claim Hudbay Minerals is liable for violence that left one man dead, another in a wheelchair and a group of women victims of gang rapes.

The company denies it is to blame.

After traveling for two days from their tiny villages, four Guatemalan women and one man arrived this week in Toronto. Their sandals suggested they were not prepared to face Toronto’s subzero temperatures.

But Angelica Choc said she’s ready to face those she blames for the death of her husband.

“When the plane landed I had a very sad feeling remembering him,” she said, “but I am here to find justice.”

Adolfo Ich was shot to death in 2009. He was a community leader fighting efforts to evict villagers from their land. Through tears, Choc recalls the moment her son broke the news.

“Mama,” she remembered him saying as he knelt before her. “They’ve killed my father.”

In court documents, Choc and the others claim security officers employed by Hudbay’s Guatemalan subsidiary are responsible for the violence. But they claim Hudbay is liable because it knew the officers weren’t licensed, were poorly trained and carried illegal weapons.

The company denies that and says it respects and protects human rights.

At San Lorenzo church in north Toronto, the mainly Latino congregation’s songs of praise carry a distinctive rhythm. Today, the worshipers are welcoming the Guatemalans who have come to share their stories.

Rosa Elbira slumped in her chair, choking back tears as she recounted the day in 2007 when she said she was repeatedly raped by nine men. Among them, she claimed, were police, soldiers and security officers for a mining company. Beside her, holding her hand in support, sat 23-year-old German Chub Choc.

He’s paralyzed from the waist down, a bullet still lodged near his spine. He admitted to moments despair since the day in 2009 when he said he was shot by the head of the mining company’s security detail.

“Look at me,” he said, pointing to his wheelchair. “Look at what I’ve become.”

HudBay argues the claims won’t hold up in a Canadian court. But its lawyers are trying to stop the case from even getting that far, arguing any case should be tried in Guatemala.

But the lawyer for the Guatemalans, Murray Klippenstein, said that’s unrealistic.

“Many organizations note the Guatemalan legal system is basically corrupt, it’s open to the intimidation and threatening of witnesses – you basically can’t get justice in Guatemala,” Klippenstein said.

Audrey Macklin, a professor at the University of Toronto law school, said the Guatemalans are facing significant but not insurmountable hurdles.

“Canadian judges have traditionally been reluctant to hear these kinds of cases, even when the plaintiffs argue that the justice system in their own nations are corrupt or ineffective,” she said.

American courts have also faced many cases involving multinational companies operating abroad. They’ve been more willing to let the plaintiffs be heard.

Retired Supreme Court of Canada justice Ian Binnie isn’t familiar with this case. But he said the time may be coming to rethink the issue in Canada.

“Eventually, the courts are going to have to face up to the fact that in any responsible legal system people have a right to a day in court. And if the only court available is in Canada then that’s where the problem should be faced,” Binnie said.

Taking comfort among those supporting them at the church, the Guatemalans know they’ve got a long hard fight ahead of them.

But they insist their only route to justice for what they claim happened in their villages – is through a Canadian courtroom.

The year was 1948 and Britain was struggling to recover from the Second World War.

Today, only one of the venues from those games still hosts competitors, though not Olympic ones. It’s the Herne Hill velodrome in the southern reaches of London.

It’s pretty basic — no roof, so the recent rains have turned the infield into a muddy bog. The grandstand is a bit rickety too. But it still has a storied pride of place in Britain’s Olympic history.

Emerging from the dark shadow of the World War II, the 1948 Olympics were Britain’s chance to prove to the world it had triumphed over adversity. Still, the home team, marching into the stadium, faced a number of challenges. So, too, did the Games organizers, particularly when it came to preparing the cycling track.

“There was grass growing through the track center and it was in a dilapidated state,” said Wally Happy. A former competitive cyclist himself, Happy knows the history of cycling and this old velodrome well. It opened in 1891. But the war, and the army’s decision to station anti-aircraft guns on the site, left their mark.

Happy said there was only one way to ensure it would be ready for the games.

“We raised money amongst the cyclists to rebuild it,” he said. “We mortgaged our headquarters up in Central London.”

There wasn’t much money and not much food either, due to post-war rationing. So Happy says Commonwealth countries stepped in to help out.

“The Olympic team were receiving food parcels from Canada, Australia, New Zealand South Africa,” he said. “If it hadn’t been for that, nourishment for those riders would have been nil.”

Among those riders was one who’s now a legend at the Herne Hill velodrome. Tommy Godwin, now 91, recently returned to the track where he became an Olympian all those decades ago.

Godwin developed a passion for cycling after working as a delivery boy. During the war, he worked in a munitions factory, so 1948 was Godwin’s first, and possibly only chance, at Olympic glory. His father, a former athlete himself, wasn’t about to let his son fail, even if there wasn’t enough food for a cyclist in training.

“He used to give me a glass of sherry and put a fresh egg in it and drink that and then he said I would have to have a glass of Guinness to get the iron content,” Godwin said. “My father knew a lot of practical things.”

Godwin knew he’d become a real medal threat the day the Americans came calling. He’d been born in the United States, but moved to Britain as a child.

“Yes indeed, they came across to me and they said you’re American by birth. I said yes and they said would you consider changing your allegiance? I said indeed not. I said I’m very much British and that’s it.”

And so, Godwin raced under the Union Jack. He won two bronze medals, enough he said to prompt his stoic father to cry with pride.

Godwin remembers those Games and this track, and he compares it to the high-tech, high-cost flashy Olympics of today. Godwin cherishes all that 1948 brought to him – including the hardship.

“You had to take things as they come along,” Godwin said. “To be in the Olympic Games, you put heart and soul into it regardless of the failure of certain things.”

On this day, Godwin couldn’t resist. He got up on the bike, recreating his victory lap in the velodrome, and doing it in pretty good time.

For a moment, he grins like the young Olympian he used to be.

This harbor used to be lined with herring canneries, dozens of them. Piers Croker, the curator of the Norway Canning Museum, says it was the lifeblood of Stavanger.

“Let’s put it like this,” he says. “Fifty percent of the working population was employed in the canneries; another 15 percent in the supply industries. And there was a newspaper headline in the 1920s ‘The City that Stands on One Leg’ and that leg was canning.”

Croker shows an old canning machine and says one employee set a record when he managed to seal a thousand cans a day. That man’s grandson still lives in the town. But the canneries were all gone by the early 1980s.

Almost everyone now works in the offshore oil industry that transformed the town. Croker says the change was stunning.

“There was a guy who had been in the in canning industry for 30 years. And his wages, when he retired from the canning industry, were less than his 18-year-old daughter [was making] beginning in the oil industry.”

The sleepy fishing town now boasts high-end fashion shops. The harbor is dotted with cranes and offshore oil platforms either in for maintenance or ready to float out to the North Sea drilling sites. It is evidence of good times. But it is also proof that Norway has avoided the so-called “Dutch disease.” Everywhere else in the world a boom in oil has led to a decline and sometimes devastation of other parts of the economy.

Norway’s success, some say, is largely down to one man. “Had [I not come] to Norway, I probably would have not done even anything with these ideas,” says Farouk al-Kasim. Al-Kasim, who is in his mid-seventies now, moved to the town with his Norwegian wife and family in the late 1960s from Iraq where he worked as a geologist for the state oil company.

Al-Kasim quickly found work just as one of the world’s largest oilfields was discovered off the coast of Norway. The government saw his background and hired him to help devise a strategy for managing the resource and the revenue. Al-Kasim says one of the first things Norway did right was to control its new found wealth.

“You don’t really benefit at all by allowing oil revenue to come onto you like a tsunami and flood everything that will completely destroy non-oil sectors of the economy,” he says. That’s what happened in the Netherlands in the 1970s. As oil exports boomed, the flood of money into the domestic economy inflated the currency, leading to price increases. The increases destroyed exports and led to joblessness and inequality.

By contrast, Norway has held on to almost all of the revenue it earns in a giant and ever-growing savings account, known as the “oil fund.” It now holds almost $600 billion and is one of the largest sovereign wealth funds in the world.

Petter Osmundsen, professor of petroleum economics at the University of Stavanger, says the small amount the government withdraws for spending each year — four percent — is more than enough. “We have been spending a lot of money so even this four percent is a very good increase in public budgets over the last years with good oil price and high oil production,” he says. “We are not starving.”

And the sovereign fund isn’t allowed to invest in Norway. That helps avoid inflation and makes non-oil companies more competitive globally.

But there are challenges. Osmundsen says the global financial crisis has made Norway almost too successful compared to its neighbors.

“We are having good times whereas the others are having bad times,” Osmundsen says. “So we keep getting pay rises whereas the other countries are getting pay cuts. If this lasts for a number of years the Norwegian competitiveness will be reduced in other industries than oil.” So earlier this month, Norway decided to cut its spending from oil income by a billion dollars to slow economic growth.

None of this seems to bother Norwegians, even though the fund holds more than one $100,000 for each citizen. They seem content to save for the future and continue to pay high taxes. Al-Kasim isn’t surprised by their attitude. He believes one of the reasons the Norwegian approach has worked is something he noticed when he first arrived more than 40 years ago.

Al-Kasim believes it was a legacy of the Second World War when Norwegians lived under Nazi occupation. “This sense of belonging together, being completely not only dependent on each other, but trusting each other, this solidarity in the nation was absolutely unique,” he says.

Across town from the simple structure that houses the canning museum, Stavanger’s oil museum is a much more modern, sleek building right on the waterfront. The almost spooky echo of a simulated depth sounder is one of the exhibits, along with scale models of drilling platforms meant to give an impression of what it’s like to drill for oil under the sea. But there’s also a digital clock showing the oil revenue climbing second by second. Another wing houses a gourmet restaurant with gourmet prices. Oil has been good to the town – it’s now one of the most expensive cities in the world. And to Norway.

It’s the location of a new data center being built by Facebook.

It will consist of three massive buildings to house servers – the machines that store all the information and process all the mouse clicks that keep “The Cloud” afloat.

This place is cold – it’s 550 miles north of Stockholm.

Final clue — this city is considered the capital of Swedish Lapland.

Luleå is the answer to the Geo Quiz.

Facebook isn’t the only high-tech company building a server farm in the north.

While the likes of Facebook and Google have headquarters in California, their servers can be anywhere.

And more and more, these server farms are being built in chilly, northern places – it’s one way of keeping energy costs down, because the machines have to be kept cool.

The countries of Scandinavia are now competing to attract this sort of server business.

The World’s Laura Lynch visited another server site – this one on Rennesoy Island in Norway.

The Syrian town of Douma, just outside Damascus, has been the scene recently of some of the most intense clashes between government forces and opposition fighters.

The army is now back in control of large parts of Douma. But that doesn’t mean the fighting or the dying is over.

At first glance Douma looks like a bustling town on a busy Saturday. The shops are open for business and children are playing in the street. But in this town of half a million people, this is only a veneer. Coming around the corner, six truckloads of government soldiers wheel into view. And the people melt back into their homes and shops, into the shadows.

On the outskirts of Douma, members of the Free Syrian Army have gathered on the grounds of what used to be a graceful villa before it was hit by mortars.The rebel soldiers communicate on walkie-talkies as they pace over shattered glass, clutching rifles in one hand, cigarettes in the other.

A junior recruit – 21-years-old – wears battle fatigues and an ammunition belt around his wait. He said he defected because he couldn’t bear the way the army was treating its own people.

“When I was on duty at army checkpoints,” he said, “any civilian approaching would be dragged out of his car and put in prison for days.”

For him, the arrival of the UN monitors has provided no relief.

“Because they’ll enter a home and talk to someone, then they’ll go to the government’s security agents and tell them what we said,” he explained.

He and other rebel soldiers believe the UN observers are nothing more than spies. The ragtag group move around Douma in packs, in rattling cars with wobbly wheels and missing fenders. For him, he said, there is no turning back.

“Peaceful demonstrations are well and good. But we were forced into becoming violent. When the military kills my brother or my cousin, I will go out to defend him,” the soldier said.

And he showed what the battles have cost him. The top of one of his fingers is gone. Then he pulls up his shirt, to reveal a vivid red scar from surgery after he was shot in the stomach.

He may very well have been treated, at least initially, by a woman who stood before me, pulling medical supplies out of a backpack. All the supplies were smuggled in past army checkpoints.

She barely qualifies as a nurse, having only finished the most basic training.But she now has battlefield experience and lists off the tools of her trade; sterilized bandages, antibiotics, syringes, lotions for treating burns.

“We even hide them inside the folds of our clothes,” she said. “I was stopped at the beginning of the revolution and apprehended for three hours because of these.”

She carries them to makeshift clinics inside people’s homes or she goes straight to the homes of the wounded.

“If we’re able to treat them, we do treat them. If we can’t we do our best to get them to the hospital. It is suffering in every sense of the word. A struggle to transport patients, a struggle to work in a makeshift clinic that can be raided at any given moment. At any time they could capture the wounded,” the woman said.

It’s not just soldiers. Protesters and other opposition supporters have also been hurt at demonstrations.Even though the army has control of most of Douma, there are still skirmishes and violence every week, mainly after Friday prayers.

A doctor welcomed me into his examining room. He has no regular patients now, he said, because no one can afford to come. Instead, he has a new kind of practice courtesy of the uprising.

“The injuries we are seeing are mixed. Bullet wounds to the stomach, the head, the limbs. We’ve had to carry out amputations several times,” the doctor said. “The worst cases are those who become paralyzed due to bullet wounds.”

He does most of his work at the hospital, even when the government security forces enter the wards to look for rebels. But he said he also heads out into the neighborhoods when he’s needed, despite the risks.

“The condition of the patients in the makeshift clinics is extremely bad. As doctors we aren’t allowed to carry any medicine or even basic first aid supplies. Something as simple as a bandage? I’m not allowed to have it with me. If I’m found with it I risk imprisonment,” he said.

In fact, he said he’s been jailed three times since the uprising began along with several other doctors in Douma. I asked him whether government forces are trying to stop him from helping those they consider they enemy.

“For sure,” he said. “Because they say to me that I am treating terrorist gangs. All the time they’re accusing me of treating terrorist gangs! What we really have is a nation that wants freedom.”

In the town, the walls of buildings damaged by mortar fire are filled with anti-regime graffiti. The Free Syrian army roam the streets ready for more battles. A few days ago, UN monitors spotted government army tanks in violation of the terms of the ceasefire.

All that is visible on Douma’s streets suggest there is much tension and yet more trouble in store.

A team of UN observers is currently in Syria as part of the joint UN-Arab League peace plan. The observers began deploying this April.

The World’s Laura Lynch is one of the few foreign journalists allowed into Syria.

Follow @lauralynchworld

On the Frontline of Violence in Douma

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My last report from #Syria.In #Douma, met FSA, doctor and nurse who face arrest for treating the wounded. bit.ly/Ju1UC2 @pritheworld

— lauralynchworld (@lauralynchworld) May 17, 2012

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— lauralynchworld (@lauralynchworld) May 15, 2012

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— lauralynchworld (@lauralynchworld) May 13, 2012

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At the edge of #Deir, army officers admit they can’t control the town, but act with restraint while under fire. #Syria

— lauralynchworld (@lauralynchworld) May 11, 2012

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#Damascus.The crater today’s #bomb blast left behind along with much destruction, death and injury. #Syria twitter.com/lauralynchworl…

— lauralynchworld (@lauralynchworld) May 10, 2012

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#Syria foreign ministry blasts #US #UN ambo Rice as uninformed, and politcally motivated when she says gov’t not implementing peace plan.

— lauralynchworld (@lauralynchworld) May 9, 2012

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Visited #Homs today.Gunfire in #Khalidiya and so much destruction in #BabaAmr.And people just trying to survive. twitter.com/lauralynchworl…

— lauralynchworld (@lauralynchworld) May 8, 2012

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Read tweets about Syria

The World’s Laura Lynch has just returned from Syria, where she had the opportunity to ask people in Damascus about how the upheaval there is affecting everyday life.

Lynch says that the violence there has caused some people to move their families to different parts of the city during the weekend, when violence is usually worst.

Others told her that they have put photos of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in their windows as a way to try to dissuade security forces from coming into their homes.

Laura Lynch talks with Lisa Mullins about what she heard from the residents of Damascus.

Read the Transcript
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Lisa Mullins: I’m Lisa Mullins and this is “The World”. The crisis in Syria is looking more like civil war. The violence today focused on the central city of Rastan. Opposition forces says the city was shelled overnight by the Syrian Army. Clashes followed between the army and activists. The activists say thirty people were killed, twenty-three of them soldiers. The tension in Syria is rising by the day. It’s palpable in Damascus. The capital was hit last week by twin suicide bombings. The World’s Laura Lynch left Damascus this morning. She’s now in London. She was in Syria all last week and spoke with a variety of Syrians about the crisis. Most of them didn’t want to speak into a microphone. They were afraid of repercussions. But some did agree to speak informally about how the crisis has affected their lives.

Laura Lynch: For some of the people I talked to, it meant taking strategic moves during different days of the week. Most of the demonstrations happen on Fridays which are the days when people gather in mosques for Friday prayers, and usually the protests spill out into the street after that and that’s when there are clashes with the security forces. So some people are actually moving their families out of their homes on Fridays and Saturdays to other, what they consider to be safer locations for those two days until things calm down again because they can hear the gunfire. They think it’s too much of a risk to their family, so they get out and then they go back in on Sunday and they’re there for the rest of the week.

Mullins: So people are afraid of the violence. How scared are people of the Assad regime of the government?

Lynch: I think I got a sense of that in talking to one man who is in a neighborhood that he says actually hasn’t had a lot of protests and demonstrations, but it has experienced security agents going door-to-door searching for sympathizers with the opposition, and he would like to see change in his country. He’s not necessarily a big supporter of Assad, but his children are so frightened that they have repeatedly put a picture of Assad in the window of the house to try to deter anyone from coming to their house and searching it. He also says that they’ve put a picture of Assad as the screensaver on the laptop computers so then when the open up the computer, anyone who’s looking at it will see and think that they are very pro-Assad. So that gives you some measure of the fear that exists, and these are in young people. I suspect that that’s true for some older people as well, but the young are feeling especially vulnerable. I did talk to one other man who recounted a really hard conversation he was having with his eight-year-old son who just didn’t understand what was going on in his country. He was trying to explain to him, he asked him, “Why were Syrians fighting each other?” Those basic kind of child’s questions about what’s going on in the country that seem so unimaginable to him, and this man and his wife and his child are now trying to seriously consider whether it’s time to get out of Syria, as are many others. Those are people who have the means to leave Syria and could live somewhere else. For many others that’s simply not an option.

Mullins: By the way, did he tell you, that father whose child asked why Syrians are fighting each other, did he tell you what his response was?

Lynch: He said he was trying to explain it in the most simple terms possible, but it was still difficult for an eight-year-old to understand that there could be people of the same country that were clashing with each other. And he’s still not sure that his son actually understands what’s going on, and he says, “Well, why should he? This doesn’t make sense to those of us who are adults.”

Mullins: Did you speak to anybody who is pro-government? Pro-Assad?

Lynch: Yes, and when you speak to those people, they are not terribly shy about speaking to you at all, on tape or not, and I’ve met several over the days in Damascus who speak fiercely proudly of the president and of his government and how they’ve given Syria so much, a good economy, they’ve given Syria it’s stability, and that the people who are fighting them are thugs, they are foreign funded fighters, and they don’t want them on Syrian soil anymore. They believe that these people have ruined the country that was doing so well. They also say to me that Assad is making steps toward what they consider to be true reform and that he just needs more time. So even they, in their support of Assad, recognize the need for reform in their country. They just don’t want it to happen this way.

Mullins: The time that you were there in Damascus, Syria, did you find, Laura, that it’s a city where you can still get a cup of coffee or go out to a restaurant? Or is it more a city in lockdown?

Lynch: It still is in many parts of the city, large parts of the city, very easy to move around, very easy to go to a nice restaurant and get a nice meal, as you said, go to a nice cafe, get a nice cup of coffee. It seems, if you’re in certain parts of town, that there is no problem at all and you’ll see lots of Damascenes going out and enjoying themselves. But if you look around, and you don’t have to look far, all I had to do was look in the hallways of my incredibly empty hotel, I don’t think I saw another person staying on the same floor as me the whole I was there, you get a sense that the tourism industry at the very least is taking a huge hit in Syria. And it depends on that industry. I saw very few tourist there. There were several journalists around and some businessmen, but, boy, they are really suffering for lack of people coming into the country.

Mullins: The World’s Laura Lynch who has just returned from Syria. Thank you, Laura.

Lynch: You’re welcome.

Mullins: You can find more of Laura’s reporting from Syria, including her pictures of the devastated city of Homs, that’s at theworld.org.

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More of Laura’s coverage from inside Syria

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It is necessary but grim work. Emergency crews clear up the debris that’s scattered across the roadway. With each scrape across the charred pavement, the shovels pick up burnt metal, bits of clothing and even human flesh.

Nearby, the shells of what used to be more than twenty cars and buses show just how powerful these bombs were. So too do the two craters, each several feet deep. The bombs hit just outside a huge military intelligence building, ripping off its façade. But the blasts shattered windows and lives many yards away.

#Damascus.The crater today’s #bomb blast left behind along with much destruction, death and injury. #Syria twitter.com/lauralynchworl…

— lauralynchworld (@lauralynchworld) May 10, 2012

Men at a small garage are trying to pull away metal sheeting that landed in front of the entrance. The owner sits inside, staring in disbelief at the scene around him.

“It sounded more than an earthquake than an explosion,” the man said.

The first explosion hit just before 8:00 as he, his wife and three daughters slept. He grabbed his children and moved them back just before the second blast laid waste to their bedrooms. Everyone is alive – he kisses his hands then raises them upward in gratitude.

“Eh, Hamdilluah, Oh my God thank you,” he said.

But with so many others dead and wounded, there is anger aimed at those he blames – other nations who support the opposition.

“This is their gift to us?” he asked. “Is this democracy, is this freedom? I don’t think this is freedom and think this is a conspiracy against my country.”

At a military hospital, the first casualties came in within minutes.

One soldier who didn’t want to give his name, lay in his hospital bed, his face and legs pockmarked with shrapnel wounds. He said his back has deep bruises and his feet are wrapped in bandages. He was in the military building when the blasts hit. He made it out to the street and found a gruesome scene.

“There were cars that were burned out completely, there was fire all around us, he says. All the houses across the road were smashed. There were people buried under the rubble, including women and children,” he said.

This is the latest, and by far the worst in a series of bombings in Damascus in the last several weeks.

Doctor Majid Hassan, tending to another soldier, said it represents a new and alarming shift in what has already been a long and violent uprising.

Back at the scene of the bombings, the cleanup continues as do the questions about just who was behind them. As much as people here blame terrorists supported by foreign interests, the opposition insists it’s a government operation aimed at discrediting them.

Whatever the truth, today’s assault on one Damascus neighborhood drives the chances for peace back even further.

More of Laura’s coverage from inside Syria

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Syrian rebels are reported to have killed seven pro-government militiamen in a Damascus suburb.

And the head of the UN military observer mission got an up-close taste of the violence Wednesday when a bomb exploded near his convoy.

The World’s Laura Lynch reports.

See Laura Lynch’s slideshow ‘On The Streets Of Homs’ from Tuesday here