'Oh my God, they are shooting!' - Ottawa Citizen

The funeral possession had been joined by thousands of Syrians, filling the street in central Damascus.

Women, some clutching the hands of their children, followed the three green box coffins, sending their martyrs to heaven with high-pitched, ululating cries.

Protectively encircled by rings of men, spurred by the exuberant crush of thousands clapping in unison, they unfurled Syria's revolutionary flag.

The flashes of green, white and black silk were nine metres across, covering the women as they held it to the sky. The first gun shot, which was a Syrian army officer's signal to his troops, went almost unheard among the songs and chants.

Seconds later, though, the air was filled with deafening and relentless gunfire and the terrified screams of the crowds.

"They are shooting. Oh my God, they are shooting!" screamed a woman, grabbing her five-year-old daughter.

Live rounds hissed overhead or smacked into shop walls. The stampede of as many as 15,000 people turned into a merciless dash for selfpreservation.

As they ran down alleyways, the echo caused by the tall apartment blocks made it impossible to identify the direction of the gunfire. Syrian security forces and the Shabiha, much-feared regime paramilitaries, blocked the exits of the streets.

Snipers fired from roof tops all across the neighbourhood of Mezze.

Raja, 23, a university student, dived into the open doorway of a four-storey apartment block. Her lungs burning, looking wildly up the street, she screamed for her 17-year-old sister, Noor.

Grabbing Noor's hand, they ran up the stairs, and found the open front-door of an apartment whose owner, an elderly woman, was sheltering fleeing protesters.

A crush of men filled the hallway to protect the entrance, while a dozen women sheltered inside.

In the kitchen, a young girl nursed the graze on her cheek, caused by a fall on to concrete in the escape, and mothers cradled the crying toddlers.

Two teenage girls hugged each other tightly, sobbing uncontrollably. A skinny girl with wide eyes sat on a chair in the corner, trying to drink from a glass but spilling her drink as her hands shook from shock and fear.

They had not expected this funeral march to become violent.

"We had an agreement with the security forces that we would not say anything against President Bashar al-Assad, and that they would not shoot," said Raja.

The funeral had been for three men shot dead by security forces at an anti-government protest the day before.

It was the first time that security forces have opened fire on crowds in this central, and upmarket, district of Damascus, an ugly milestone in the authorities' repression of the 11-month long protest against the Assad regime.

Dozens were wounded and, at least, one man killed. Four others were reported to have been killed across Syria on what was a relatively quiet day of protest and repression.

But the scale of the events in Damascus, just a few miles from where Assad was at that moment telling a Chinese envoy of a conspiracy to split the country, caught everyone by surprise.