Aleppo still badly scarred by war, months after rebel defeat
ALEPPO, Syria — “Aleppo is in my eyes,” says a billboard depicting President Bashar Assad looking out over two men and a boy repaving the main Saadallah al-Jabiri Square — once a front line in one of the deadliest episodes of the Syrian civil war.
The recapture of eastern Aleppo in December 2016 was a landmark victory for Assad’s forces in the conflict, now in its seventh year, but it left the area in ruins.
Eight months later, neighbourhood after neighbourhood in the formerly rebel-held sector still look like ghost towns. Only rarely is a family seen sitting on white plastic chairs outside the rubble.
Life is slowly returning to the desolate streets where shop signs are covered with dust, where men hawk cigarettes on a street corner and teenagers sell bananas off a picnic table.