homs. syria, a people under siege. >> this speaks for itself. >> bombarded for months. kicked off by snipers. food and supplies running out. medical care impossible. this is the story of the cnn team that got into syria's most dangerous city. to reach a handful of citizens risking 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. >> for more than a year, the regime of dictator bashar al assad had used brutal force to put down a popular uprising in syria. across the country, protesters demanded change, chanting date down with the regime." >> this is homs, baba amr. you can see over there, another rocket landed on a civilian's house. >> the city of homs became the beating heart of a growing uprising, but the syrian military sealed off one neighborhood, baba amr, as it tried to crush the revolt. >> the assad regime is shelling relentlessly these neighborhoods. there are snapers pged in areas that are killing people if they try to leave their homes. >> this is a civilian neighborhood where people were living normal civilian lives, being bombarded on a massk scale by its own armed forces. >> for four months, a debate continued at cnn, how, when, and if to get into homs. and baba amr. >> it was in november that i first pushed forward this notion and other trips that had gotten canceled for various reasons, sometimes the plug was pulled at the last minute. >> we have to make a decision that we're going to weigh the risks, compared to the editorial value. for me, homs was the ground zero on the syria story. no doubt about that. >> 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 you at the end of the day can do justice to what the people are suffering. >> heartbreaking footage show that no one seems to have been spared the violence. adults and children also. >> arwa damon was leading the charge on this. she's very big on the story, arabic speaker, tough, brave, resourceful. determined as we've got. >> 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 city of homs. >> my colleague turned to me and said, cindy, i think there's a massacre in homs. every day there's a death toll and suddenly this death toll in that neighborhood had gone up to over 100. >> dead bodies. >> videos uploaded from baba amr showed terrible suffering. and great courage. >> there were very few voices coming out, and two of the loudest and strongest were dr. mohammed and dr. malif. they ran the underground clinic with 15 other volunteers, but they would go on video every day and say this is my case. this is why this person is injured and this is what i need to treat them, but i can't. plans were made to get cnn into homs. neal has faced the worst in iraq, afghanistan, and israel. and tim crockett, 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 determined, forceful, strong willed individuals, but they're also smart individuals. >> we mapped out, literally mapped it out in every sense. >> do we have the right communications systems, how are we going to track the team? >> who are we going with, how are we getting there? >> if someone gets injured, what do we do? i will say this, with all of the preparation we do and all of the things we set up and the backstops we have, you're going into a war zone. you are on your own. >> i went to see my mom when it seemed like the trip was going to materialize. the dad was out of town, and i spent some time with her and 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 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 as a team, talked it through. at each point, we sort of weighed, what are we trying to achieve here, what could happen. >> we wept into it knowing the risk we were taking, and we were prepared to do that for the story. >> every scenario considered, meticulous planning, but arwa, neal, 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, ending up at various safe houses, and at every single leg, every single stop, you have a different person who is responsible to move you on, someone who knows the details of the lay of the land around you. >> as the team left for homs, those at cnn headquarters were holding their breath. >> they have moved out of the 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. >> alone on a dirt road in the middle of the night. a worrying start to a mission full of danger. tdd# 1-800-345-2550 let's talk about fees. tdd# 1-800-345-2550 there are atm fees. tdd# 1-800-345-2550 account service fees. tdd# 1-800-345-2550 and the most dreaded fees of all, hidden fees. tdd# 1-800-345-2550 at charles schwab, you won't pay fees on top of fees. tdd# 1-800-345-2550 no monthly account service fees. tdd# 1-800-345-2550 no hidden fees. tdd# 1-800-345-2550 and we rebate every atm fee. tdd# 1-800-345-2550 so talk to chuck tdd# 1-800-345-2550 because when it comes to talking, there is no fee. are you still sleeping? 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[ male announcer ] it's a network of possibilities -- helping you do what you do... even better. ♪ i get my cancer medications through the mail. now washington, they're looking at shutting down post offices coast to coast. closing plants is not the answer. they want to cut 100,000 jobs. it's gonna cost us more, and the service is gonna be less. we could lose clientele because of increased mailing times. the ripple effect is going to be devastating. congress created the problem. and if our legislators get on the ball, they can make the right decisions. the sleep number bed. the magic of this bed is that you're sleeping on something that conforms to your individual shape. wow! that feels really good. in less than a minute i can get more support. if you change your mind once you get home you can adjust it. so whatever you feel like, the sleep number bed's going to provide it for you. at our semi-annual sleep sale, save $400 to $700 on our most popular bed sets. plus, free standard shipping - but only through march 18th! only at the sleep number store, where queen mattresses start at just $699 will be giving away passafree copies of the alcoholism & addiction cure. to get yours, go to ssagesmalibubook.com. there was no front line in homs. nowhere that could be called safe. and getting in without getting caught would be perilous. the cnn team had made it out of the field and through the night. then just inside the syrian border, the first signs of hardship and conflict. >> for near lee a week now, there's not been a single loaf of bread produced here. there is no flour, and that's because it's subsidized by the government. its distribution fully in the control of the regime, and they're not sending supplies out here anymore. >> in this safe house along the way, opposition forces held a man who says he killed for the al assad regime. >> they gave us guns with scopes, and you see the body as if you're looking at yourself in the mirror. he could see the protesters wer unarmled, but he fired anymore. claiming it was kill or be killed for not carrying out orders. >> to get into baba amr, the cnn team followed a secret route. >> some of the routes are the only way they have to get whatever meager medical supplies they're getting in and more importantly to evacuate the wounded because they can't treat them. >> handed from one opposition group to the next, it would take days for arwa, neal, and tim to reach the besieged city. >> how long did it take to get to homs? >> five days. >> five days. if you wanted to drive there without any of this, how long would it take? >> a couple hours. >> what do you find when you go in there? what is your sense of the place? >> i remember looking up and around and it was dark, no light, it was one of the eeriest -- the eeriest place i have ever been, i can tell you. >> what where you thinking then? >> it's assessing what we have come into. it's 3:00 in the morning. we know the shelling is about to start in a few hours' time. we hadn't really slept much the day before. and i know we probably didn't really 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. >> we were 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, a bomb would be right out in the streets. 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, the whole experience? >> we had more incoming ranks within the first ten minutes than in the seven months i was in bosnia during the war. >> here wehave just one of many buildings that has been hit in this artillery barrage. >> 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 also wonder what life is like for people in these places and you're driving through and it's mostly deserted. most of the buildings have sustained some sort of damage. then you'll see a kid peek their head out from a door way or a man walking in the street, carrying an ak over one shoulder and a bag of diapers over the other, and there's all these people and you want to go out to them and speak to them, how did they survive for this long? what is going on? or you walk into houses that would be covered in a layer of dust and all these kids' shoes outside. just the constant sound of gunfire, 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. >> at one point, we were with some members of the free syrian army and there was like a hole in the wall that we fill a tank through, and when you pull back to that, there was a kid winnie the pooh backpack on the side of the bed. they just left, like that's kind of hard to see sometimes. you know, whole families up rooted and disappeared. >> personal belongings are still all inside. >> you do get angry. i know, you get real mad. >> i do. there's no way to answer that question, why is this happening to us? why isn't the world helping us? how many of us have to die? why is our life worth nothing? >> emotion is an important part of story telling. you don't want the reaction to be part of the story, but it's clear you're part of the story because you as a viewer are going to empathize with this. it's based on, i have been here, i have seen this. >> for the cnn team, the distraction in the streets was bad enough. but the desperation of the injured would be even more shocking. hi, i just switched jobs, and i want to roll over my old 401(k) into a fidelity ira. man: okay, no problem. it's easy to get started; i can help you with the paperwork. um...this green line just appeared on my floor. yeah, that's fidelity helping you reach your financial goals. could you hold on a second? it's your money. roll over your old 401(k) into a fidelity ira and take control of your personal economy. this is going to be helpful. call or come in today. fidelity investments. turn here. aflac! ha! isn't major medical enough? 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[ male announcer ] help your family stay afloat at aflac.com. plegh! on the horizon, smoke billows from a gas pipeline. this is the war zone that homs had become. >> cnn's arwa damon, neal holsworth, and tim crockett are in baba amr, a neighborhood that has endured constant shelling where civilians are wounded every day, where a makeshift clinic tries to help. >> we're here with dr. hamed who has been on numerous youtube videos and we're getting a firsthand look at exactly what he and his team are up against. a 30-year-old man lies on the brink of death after shrapnel hit him in the head. >> he will die if he doesn't get out. >> dr. mohammed is one of only two doctors in this clennic. the other is actually a dentist. >> dr. mohammed is not some sort of front line trained in emergency surgery combat medic. he's an internal medicine specialist. >> your gp. >> and look what he's dealing with. look at the casualties he's dealing with, 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 the leg most definitely is going to need to be amputated. >> you saw horrific wounld, all of you, in these plaszs. the guy with the leg wound, you were saying, was starting to smell. >> his name was mohammed, and he was actually wounded. 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 them, and bam, the second shell. he got wounded when the second shell hit. at this point, you can smell the rot coming from the wound. this patient has been here for four days now. >> arwa interviewed one of the doctors, the few doctors taking care of people who were being wounded in the onslaught. and he started to cry. >> here is 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. >> what is it like filming that? >> well, you've got to be respectful, so it's tough filming, to show how bad it is and two, not intrude. >> intrude. >> too much, so it is tough. >> every patient is desperate to tell their story by any means possible. this man, tracing the shape of a tank on the wall. >> this here is abed, and he's been drawing, trying to explain toulse what happened because he's in so much agony he can't speak. he's one of the cameraman that goes out, risks his life all the time. some of his clips that we have constantly seen 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 have seen injuries and wounds equally as nasty in my career, but i think what really struck me was the fact they had nothing. few medicines and dressings and stuff on shelves. other than that, there was nothing. nothing to deal with the kinds of wounds they were getting. >> abudi was a 19-year-old man. we saw him inside the clinic. he was barely hanging on. there was this young woman who was treating him. she was 27 years. she also was a volunteer medic. they 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 all of a sudden, he found himself in the hospital bed as well. >> just hours after this video was taken, abudi 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 is nothing that one can do to ease their pain. there's no way to fix their situation. >> but there is some good news. at least two of the men nccnn people's report are alive. abad made it to a hospital in lebanon. so, too, did mohammed. >> he did actually manage to get out. but not in time. the last i heard was, yes, his leg was going to have to be amputated. >> what may never be known are the fates of hundreds of other people who were unable or unwilling to flee. >> it is so indiscriminate, so wide spread, and it's hard to put into words, but every single person that you meet there has gone through something so horrific, no other human would ever want to go through it. for fastidious librarian emily skinner, each day was fueled by thorough preparation for events to come. well somewhere along the way, emily went right on living. but you see, with the help of her raymond james financial advisor, she had planned for every eventuality. ...which meant she continued to have the means to live on... ...even at the ripe old age of 187. life well planned. see what a raymond james advisor can do for you. with determination. courage. and all the points i earned with my citi thankyou card. [ male announcer ] the citi thankyou card. redeem points for travel on any airline with no blackout dates. when cnn's arwa damon, neil holsworth, and tim crockett ventured into the streets of homs -- >> it's nonstop, the gunfire. >> they were met by the sounds of war and scenes of desolation. >> it's not deserted. there's thousands of people there. >> there are, and a lot of them are staying indoors. the mosques were putting out messages, actually, when the bombardment started, telling people to not live on the upper floors of their buildings, to try to stay away from windows, try to find protected rooms inside their homes. a lot of families had also moved into bunkers. these aren't real bunkers. they're actually just the basements that are only located in a few of the buildings and homes around here, so all of the families that haven't been able to escape stay in them. so this is mohammed, who has been telling us that there were around 250 people that were staying in this one room. half of them have actually fled in the last 24 hours because they heard that this particular location was going to get targeted, and those that have stayed are literally the ones that have absolutely nowhere, nowhere at all to go. >> they huddle in near darkness. >> it's cold because it's cold this time of year. they haven't got heating oil being supplied into the neighborhood or into that part of the city. >> these makeshift bunkers we were in, almost every single woman that came up to talk to us, they would pull you in every direction because of all them had something they wanted to