“It’s so dangerous to spend nights in the open fields with little children, but what else can we do? We were forced out of our house,” he said.

Instead of relaxing at home — enjoying the Mediterranean’s favorite fruit to break the day-long Ramadan fast — Omar was taking shelter among the silver-leafed olive trees, having fled the battles in Syria’s capital for the relative safety of its surrounding countryside.

Fighting between Republican Guard soldiers and Syrian rebels reached new extremes in the capital over the weekend, as Syrian President Bashar al-Assad attempted to restore control after last week’s stunning assassination of four of his security chiefs.

The battles have forced many Syrians living in Damascus, including Omar and his wife and three children, to flee.

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“You have to have full confidence, beyond any doubt, that the morale of your military is higher than ever before, and the morale of our people is the highest ever,” said Information Minister Omran Zuabi on Syria TV.

The morale-boosting measure in question?

A bomb that had exploded inside the National Security building during a meeting of the police state’s top security chiefs. The explosion killed the defense minister and the head of Assad’s crisis management group. It badly injured the interior minister and national security chief – whose status remains unknown. Critically, it also killed President Bashar al-Assad’s powerful brother-in-law, Assef Shawkat, the longtime military intelligence chief, often referred to as “Syria’s second president.”

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