[Malveaux:] Imagine this. A family of five living in a grave. That is how one of the members of the family, Kurdeyah family, actually describes this underground bunker where they are hiding. The war is raging above them in the Syrian city of Aleppo and they've been underground now for months. Arwa Damon is taking us down into the dark basement hideout to actually meet this family.
[Arwa Damon, Cnn International Correspondnet:] Down a steep, stone stairway into the darkness, this is where the Kurdeyah family has been hiding for four months. The strikes were all around us. We just ran out with nothing, 20- year-old Fakma recalls. We just ran and ran down here and the shrapnel was falling all over. Since then they've dared occasionally to go back home to collect belongings. There would be bombing like that and we'd come running back here, Fakma says. Their home is just five doors away, but it's right on one of Aleppo's front lines. It's been hit by artillery fire since they fled. We go home every two weeks to shower, fearful and terrorized, Fakma's mother tells us. We have a weak home. It could crumble any moment. Their makeshift bunker was a workshop, the carpenters intricately carved furniture still lines the walls. The last time the family ventured out was three weeks ago. Fakma and her younger sister want to leave. Anywhere but here. Anywhere they can feel the sun and smell fresh air, but their father refuses. Poor but proud, he says he doesn't want to be at the mercy of others. Here he can send his son to scrape money and buy a little food. It's humbling how amidst all they have lost and suffered, they insist on offering us tea. The girls dream of wounded neighbors. Their mother has nightmares her children are dead and says she feels her heart is going to burst with each explosion. I just tell her it's far away and not to be scared, Fakma says, but sometimes the bombings are so close the family says they choke on the dust. What can we say? We're living in a prison, prisoners in a prison, Fakma says. It's more like a grave, Fahra adds. To give you an idea of just how dark it really is and terrifying with all of the sounds of the gunfire outside, we're going to switch our camera light off. This tiny flame is all the family has as they listen to the sounds of war above. Arwa Damon, CNN, Aleppo.
[Malveaux:] Social media have been critical to getting the word out in Syria. Video like the one posted on-line this one right here shows peaceful demonstrations against President Bashar al-Assad that began last year and spiraled into now what is happening. Activists regularly posting these videos and articles about the civil war that is taking place there. Often these are really just only the images we are able to get from the front lines. We see it there. Lara Setrakian is trying to build on the information we get out of Syria. She is co-founder and managing editor of SyriaDeeply.org. Lara, you're a former correspondent with ABC and Bloomberg, as well. You have seen some of the what is taking place there. What do you make of the civil war?
[Lara Setrakian, Co-founder, Syriadeeply.org:] Suzanne, my heart breaks when I watch families like the ones in Arwa's piece. And what we needed to do, what we felt we had to do was to step out of the story for a moment and just look at technology, look at what's coming out from user-generated images, from voices of Syrians trying to tell their stories and just collect it in one place, so we decided to build SyriaDeeply. It's part news-aggregator, part interactive-backgrounder, part original reporting. And what we felt we need do was to give people more background, more indication and engagement on these issues because, months and months into this crisis, so many people just don't understand and don't really have a way to make sense of it. It's so complex and there are so many sophisticated pieces, we just wanted to do the best we could with technology to make it all make sense.
[Malveaux:] And how tough is it to actually get an accurate picture of what is taking place on the ground? We have heard that we know with the Internet being down, some of the phone lines as well, that it is very difficult to actually have people communicate with each other and really get the real story out.
[Setrakian:] Absolutely. We had a kind of lucky break last week. Our reporters in Aleppo were on the Internet using a satellite connection when the whole country was cut of from the worldwide web, so we had information, at least some, coming out. But what we find is that it's a very innovative social media game right now in Syria. The front lines are really on Skype, the conversations, those private chat rooms where we're invited in, where we can listen to these conversations in real-time chronicling battles in different cities and watching people communicate with each other. So Skype is really become the way that we get a lot of that information out then we see what's posted on Facebook and other networks.
[Malveaux:] And, Lara, what we're hearing from world leaders, they're very concerned about Syria's chemical weapons. That Bashar al-Assad might use them against his own people or fall in the hands of those that might terrorize other communities and countries. The people that you talk to, what are they most concerned about?
[Setrakian:] They're really afraid of what happens in this critical period where the Assad regime starts to crumble and the opposition isn't necessarily ready to take over and secure those sites. So, this is really the clutch time where only do we need to worry about what the Assad regime might do, but how that transition is going to be handled and managed. Sources are telling us that there is an active contingency plan under way that the international community is trying to train the opposition in how to secure those sites, everything from 24-hour Skype connections with rebel brigades to try to secure those chemical weapons facilities to train them in how to communicate with the current regime, officials in the regime right now being reached by the opposition who really want to say, you know, help us out here, let's try to insure some continuity for the day after.
[Malveaux:] Laura Setrakian, thank you so much. Excellent reporting. Really appreciate it. More than 200,000 people, they are in shelters right now in the Philippines because of Typhoon Bopha. We'll have the very latest as the death toll now rises.