Page 10 - ARUBA TODAY

A10 WORLD NEWS
Wednesday 13 september 2017
Aleppo still badly scarred by war, months after rebel defeat

By NATALIYA VASILYEVA Life is slowly returning to
Associated Press the desolate streets where
ALEPPO, Syria (AP) — shop signs are covered
“Aleppo is in my eyes,” says with dust, where men hawk
a billboard depicting Presi- cigarettes on a street cor-
dent Bashar Assad look- ner and teenagers sell ba-
ing out over two men and nanas off a picnic table.
a boy repaving the main Rami Abdurrahman, di-
Saadallah al-Jabiri Square rector of the Britain-based
— once a front line in one Syrian Observatory for Hu-
of the deadliest episodes man Rights, says thousands
of the Syrian civil war. of people have returned
The recapture of eastern to their homes in Aleppo
Aleppo in December 2016 — once Syria’s largest city
was a landmark victory for — from camps for the dis-
Assad’s forces in the con- placed.
flict, now in its seventh year, Russian troops mediating
but it left the area in ruins. between the Syrian gov-
Eight months later, neigh- ernment and various oppo-
borhood after neighbor- sition factions have helped.
hood in the formerly reb- The task force’s chief in the
el-held sector still look like province, Maj. Gen. Igor
A man crosses the road with his bicycle in what was once a rebel-controlled area in Aleppo, ghost towns. Only rarely is a Yemelyanov, said it has
Syria, Tuesday, Sept. 12, 2017. The recapture of eastern Aleppo in December 2016, one of the family seen sitting on white helped 3,500 people return
deadliest episodes of the Syrian civil war, was a landmark victory for Assad’s forces in the conflict,
now in its seventh year, but it left the area in ruins. plastic chairs outside the to nearby villages.
(AP Photo/Nataliya Vasilyeva) rubble. Although Syrian govern-
ment-controlled neigh-
borhoods did not see the
destruction and loss of life
on a scale comparable to
what eastern Aleppo en-
dured, the seemingly quiet
neighborhoods in the west
also bear the scars of con-
flict.
The third floor of a school
in southwestern Aleppo still
has no glass after its win-
dow was blown out when
a missile landed in a class-
room in November 2016.
Two students were killed
in the classroom, and four
died in a playground un-
der the windows, principal
Nakhlya Deri told reporters
Tuesday during a visit ar-
ranged by the Russian De-
fense Ministry.
Residents have been re-
silient throughout, Deri in-
sisted, describing how the
school kept operating.
“After the attack, we
closed down. On the fol-
lowing day, we cleared
out the debris; and on the
third day we started work-
ing,” she said.Even though
the siege of Aleppo ended
eight months ago, munici-
pal services fully restored
the electricity supply only
last week, said provincial
Gov. Hamied Kenno.
Most of the city’s power
plants were in eastern
Aleppo, which was cap-
tured by rebels in 2012 and
suffered catastrophic de-
struction during the battle
to recapture it. q