Children have a right to play, but in Damascus the ruined streets are their playground.
I saw dad… I saw him dead, four-year-old Marwan tells him on Dateline.
His 28-year-old father was killed by a mortar and now his grandmother, Mareen Ab Alnasser, is left to raise him.
If theres any solace at all, they still at least have their own home in a country where at least eight million people have been displaced.
But the death and destruction must seem never ending.
Luke also meets Um Mohamad at another similar shelter - she has 11 children. Five are with her, but six are still in an IS-controlled area.
We dont think of the future at all, she tells Luke. We dont know what the future holds for us.
Lukes embedded with Colonel Ahmed Zarqa and his soldiers.
Theres a promise from the soldiers that we will not go back to our families until the smiles return to all the children in Syria, he tells him.
Five years of war means that one child-in-three develops a mental disorder.
