Syria Under Siege: Photographs by Alessio Romenzi

Photographer Alessio Romenzi has been among just such enemies of the Assad government: with fighters of the Free Syrian Army and with the people of Bab Amr, a rebellious district in the besieged city of Homs. On assignment for TIME, he took shelter with local families in a basement of Bab Amr. No one dared to step outside or even venture upstairs for fear of government shells crashing onto them. Bodies were dragged into homes from the street so they would not rot in the open. The dead littered the corridors. It was too dangerous to hold funerals. Romenzi counted 25 civilian fatalities in just two hours of bombardment in his immediate area. As he wrote in an email, “The word ‘safe’ is not in our dictionary these days.”