>> reporter: bombarded for months. picked off by snipers. food and supplies running out. medical care, impossible. >> this is the story of a cnn team that got into syria's most dangerous city. to reach a handful of citizens risks their lives every day. to see firsthand, to bear witness, and to tell the world about the suffering, the grief, and the courage of homs. this is the account of "72 hours under fire." [ explosion ] >> reporter: for more than a year, the regime and dictator bashar al assad have used brutal force to put down a popular uprising in syria. across the country, protesters demands change, chanting, "down with the regime." >> this is another rocket. >> reporter: the city of homs became the beating heart of a growing uprising. but the syrian military sealed off one neighborhood as it tried to crush the revolt. >> the assad regime is shelling relentlessly these neighborhoods. there are snipers positioned in areas that are, you know, killing people as they try to leave their homes. >> it's a civilian neighborhood where people were living normal civilian lives, being bombarded on a massive scale by its own armed forces. >> reporter: for four months, a debate continued at cnn. how, when, and if to get into homs and baba ama. >> various trips have gotten canceled for various reasons. sometimes the plug was pulled at the last minute. >> we have to weigh the risks. for me, homs was the story. >> no story is worth dying for, but at the same time, when it comes to a story like syria, and others as well, you have to be there. you have to be in it, seeing it, smelling it, listening to it, so that you at the end of the day can do justice to what the people are suffering. heartbreaking footage shows that no one seems to have been spared the violence. adults and children, also. >> arwa damon was leading the charge on this. very big on that story. arabic speaker. tough, brave, resourceful. as determined as we've got. >> reporter: early in february, news emerged from homs of intense and indiscriminate shelling by regime forces. >> the death toll on monday utterly devastating. the majority of the casualties happening in the flash point city of homs. my colleague, amir turned to me and said, i think there's a massacre happening in homs. every day there's a death toll. and suddenly the death toll in that one particular neighborhood of homs had gone up to over 100. [ speaking foreign language ] >> reporter: videos upload eed showed terrible suffering and courage. &3xwh coming out, and two of the loudest and strongest voices were with dr. mohammad and dr. abi. they ran the underground medical clinic with only 15 others. but they would still go on video every single day and say, this is my case. this is why this person was injured and this is what i need to treat them. but i can't. [ speaking foreign language ] >> reporter: plans were revised to get a cnn team into homs. along with arwa damon, neil holsworth, a veteran journalist. and handling security, kim crockette, former british special forces and an expert in balancing safety with front line news coverage. >> for me, that was a very experienced, highly accomplished team. these are your determined and strong-willed individuals. but they're also smart individuals. >> we got the call, we just had to refresh the objectives, what are we trying to achieve? what are we are going to go for. >> i had a backpack, basically. >> you mapped it out in every sense, do we have the right communications systems, how are we going to track this team. who are we going with? how are we getting there? if someone gets injured, what are we going to do? but i will say this. with all the preparation we do and all the things we've set up and all the backstops we have, you're going into a war zone. you are on your own. >> i went to see my mom when it seems like this trip was going to materialize and my dad was out of town, but i went to see my mom and spent some time with her and i actually wrote a letter for the first time to my family and i went to see some very close friends as well, just in case. >> what was it about this trip? >> there was a lot of unknown going in. you know, sometimes you just get that gut feeling. >> you know, i didn't really go and say good-bye to anyone or anything like that, but probably one of the reasons why i didn't, i didn't want to think of it like that. so i tried to block that part of it out of my mind, really. >> we sat down with the team, we talked it through. at each point we tried to decide, what are we trying to achieve here? what could happen? >> we went in knowing the risk we were taking and were prepared to do that for the story. >> every scenario considered meticulous planning, but ultimately, arwa, neil, and tim would have to rely on others in their journey into a city under siege. >> it involves a fairly elaborate process of being moved through farmlands, back roads, trying to avoid the government and being at various safe houses. and at every single leg, every single stop, you have a different person who's responsible to move you on. someone who knows the details of the lay of the land around you. >> reporter: as the team left for homs, those at cnn headquarters were holding their breath. >> they have moved out of that safe house. >> at one point when they had just crossed the border, the truck stopped on the other side of the field on the dirt road, and for a journalist, that's a bad place to be. >> reporter: alone, on a dirt road, in the middle of the night. a worrying start to a mission full of danger. 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>> five days. >> five days. and if you wanted to, i don't know, just pick up and drive there without any of this. how long would it take? >> a couple hours. >> a couple hours. what do you find when you go in there? what's the sense of the place? >> looking around, it's dark, there's no lights. it's one of the eeriest -- the eeriest place i've ever been, i can tell you. >> what are you with thinkithin? >> well, it's trying to assess what we're coming into. it's 3:00 in the morning, the shelling is about to start in a few hours time. we really hadn't slept much the day before, and we really didn't sleep much in the few hours before the bombardment started. and it started almost on the dot. and it was quite intense. >> describe how it unfolded. >> well, we're basically lying on the floor in this room. we've got our equipment around us. then, you just start hearing explosions around you. some were in the distance and all of a sudden, one would be right out in the street. it was very random in its nature. >> the shelling started as it does, just about every single morning, with daybreak. and it's pretty much nonstop. and this is why the cry we're hearing from the streets here is, please, please, do something to stop the violence. >> you were in special forces. how did this rate, this whole experience? >> we had more incoming rounds within the first ten minutes than in the seven months that i was in bosnia in the war. >> here we have just one of many buildings that have been hit in this artillery barrage. >> reporter: when the bombardment eased, the team could see for the first time exactly what had happened to homs. >> the streets are mostly deserted. the majority of residents are staying indoors or have already fled. you always wonder what life is like for people in these places. and you're driving through, is it's mostly deserted. most of the buildings have sustained some sort of damage. to see the roof on that one -- and then you'll see a kid peek their head out from a doorway, or you'll see a man walking in the street, carrying an ak-41 over his shoulder and a bag of diapers over the other. and there's all these people and you want to go out and speak to them, how did they survive for this long, what were they going through? what was going on? or you'd walk into houses that were covered in a layer of dust and there'd be all these kids' shoes outside. just the constant sound of gunfire, it's nonstop. and then street after street after street of rubble, just like this. we come across some members of the free syrian army who take us around. this is another spot that you can also see the government influence on. >> there was one point with the free syrian army, there was a hole in the wall, and when you pull back from there, there was a kid with backpacks on the side of the bed. and they had just left, you know. it's kind of hard to see, sometimes. you know, whole families just uprooted and disappeared. >> personal belongings are all still inside. >> you do get angry. i know you. you get real mad. >> i do. there's no way to answer their questions of why is this happening to us? why isn't the world helping us? how many more of us have to die? where is our life worth nothing? >> emotions is an important part of "stori tellin-story te story. you are as a viewer is going to emphasize with that. this isn't a manufactured emotion. this is based on, i've been here, i've seen this. >> reporter: for the cnn team, the destruction in the streets was bad enough. but the desperation of the injured would be even more shocking. 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[ speaking foreign language ] he will die if he doesn't get out. >> reporter: dr. mohammad is one of only two doctors in this clinic. the other is actually a dentist. >> dr. mohammad, he's not some sort of front line, trained in emergency combat medic. he's an internal medicine specialist. look at the kind of casualties he's dealing with. the way he's had to cope. and the fact that it's day in and day out for him. it's relentless. the doctor is just saying that this is a patient that has to get outside of baba amr within 24 hours or else his leg most definitely is going to need to be amputated. >> you saw some horrific wounds, all of you, in these places. and the guy with the leg wound, you're saying it had started to smell. >> his name was mohammad moore, and he was actually wounded, and this is how a lot of people have been getting wounded, artillery strike happens, people get wounded in the street, other people run out to help him, and bam, the second shell. so he got wounded when a second shell struck. at this point, you can smell the rot coming from the wound. this patient has been lying here like this for four days now. >> arwa interviewed one of the doctors, the few doctors that was taking care of people that were being wounded in this onslaught. and he started to cry. [ speaking foreign language ] >> here's one doctor, one man in there crying out on a daily basis that he needs help, his patients need help. he's seen who knows how many people at this point in time die. because he can't give them what they need. lack of equipment, lack of experience, lack of medicine. and they can't get them out. >> reporter: the clinic is really many clinics spread throughout the city and moving from location to location the perilous. >> this is how they have to move around a short distance from get from one location to the other where they have the patient. six patients were killed in this building after a strike. the shelling is relentless. what they've had to do, because the clinics keep getting targeted, is try to distribute the patients around, so they have a number of houses in the vicinity where they also have these makeshift clinics as well. >> what's it like filming that? >> well, you've got to be respectful. so it's kind of tough filming, because you want to show how bad it actually is, but not intrude too much. so, you know, it is tough. >> reporter: every patient is desperate to tell their story by any means possible. this man, tracing the shape of a tank on the wall. >> this is abad and he's been drawing, trying to explain to us what happened, because he's in so much agony, he can't speak. he is one of the cameraman who goes out, risks his life all the time. it's some of his clips we constantly see posted to youtube and broadcast, and he's been drawing two tanks and explaining how he was moving down the street across from them when they fired at him. >> i've seen injuries, wounds in my career, but i think what really struck me was the fact that they had nothing. few medicines, dressings, and stuff on shelves. other than that, there was nothing. nothing to deal with the kinds of wounds that they were gettin getting. >> aboudi was a 19-year-old man. we found him inside the clinic. he was barely hanging on. there was this young woman who was treating him. she was 27 years old. she also was a volunteer medic. they'd just had two weeks of training, and you could hear the anger, the frustration, the sorrow, the sheer emotion in her voice when she was talking about how this was a young man, just at the beginning of his life. he was actually engaged to be married. and he had volunteered to help the wounded and he found himself in a hospital bed as well. [ speaking foreign language ] >> reporter: just hours after this video was taken, aboudi died. as did the 30-year-old with the severe head wound. >> you get angry that people have the capability to do this to one another. that people are suffering and that there's nothing that one can do to ease their pain. there's no way to fix their situation. >> reporter: but there is some good news. at least two of the men in the cnn team's report are alive. abad, who communicated through drawing, made it to a hospital in lebanon. so, too, did mohammad moore. >> he did, actually, manage to get out, but not in time. the last i heard was that, yes, his leg was going to have to be amputated. >> reporter: what may never be known are the fates of hundreds of other people who were unable or unwilling to flee. >> it was so indiscriminate, it was so widespread. and it's hard to put into words that every single person that you meet there has gone through something so horrific. no other human being would ever want to go through it. the map shows you where we go... but not how we get there. because in this business... there are no straight lines. only the twists and turns of an unpredictable industry. the passengers change... the gates change. government regulations change... oil peaks and plummets. and let's not even get started on the weather. the fact is: no two flights are ever the same. no matter how many times we've accomplished them in the past. the eighty-thousand employees at delta... must predict the unpredictable. anticipate the unexpected. and never let the rules... overrule common sense. this is how we tame the unwieldiness of air travel. pull it taut... and wrap it around the globe... until it's not just lines you see... it's the world. oh! [ baby crying ] ♪ what started as a whisper ♪ every day, millions of people choose to do the right thing. ♪ slowly turned to a scream ♪ there's an insurance company that does that, too. liberty mutual insurance. responsibility. what's your policy? ♪ amen, omen when cnn's arwa damon, neil hallsworth, and tim crockett ventured into the streets of homs -- [ gunfire ] >> i hear gunfire. >> reporter: they were met with the sounds of war and scenes of desolation. it's not deserted. there are thousands of people there. >> they are. and a lot of them are staying in doors. the mosques were putting out messages, actually, when the bombardment started, telli