Fleeing families return to a battered Aleppo

ALEPPO (Syria) — Syrian escapees from the Daesh group languished for hours on the sizzling concrete pavements at Aleppo’s main bus station, their faces gaunt and eyes rimmed by dark circles.

Just six months ago, the Ramussa station was the main transit point for thousands of people bussed out of Aleppo as part of a landmark evacuation deal.

Now, buses are starting to trickle through again — this time carrying traumatised families fleeing Daesh’s dwindling territory to government-held zones in the rest of the country.

“It’s a miracle that we’re here,” said Umm Hammoud, 45, who fled Daesh’s bastion city Raqqa with her 10 children aboard a pickup truck. She spoke while waiting for a bus to take her to Homs, where she will be reunited with long-lost relatives.

Before Syria’s civil war started in 2011, it took Umm Hammoud just two hours to make the 200km westward bus trip from her native Raqqa to Aleppo. This time, it took her and her family a month.

“We fled Raqqa at the beginning of holy month of Ramadan (which began in late May) after each paying 150,000 Syrian pounds,” or around $300, Umm Hammoud said. She recounted a terrifying journey delayed by heavy air strikes on militant-held villages and difficulty negotiating with smugglers. “When we got here, we could barely believe that we survived,” she said.

Umm Hammoud and her family skirted landmines, air strikes, and a Daesh patrol unit tracking down anyone trying to flee the city.

But when they reached Aleppo, they did not find the bustling commercial metropolis they had once known.

Previously Syria’s industrial hub, Aleppo had been ravaged by four years of battles between rebel groups and the army before the December evacuation deal allowed the military to retake full control.

“I visited Aleppo as a child with my parents. We’d eat at restaurants, it was beautiful,” Umm Hammoud recalled, her voice cracking.

Much of the city is now in ruins, a shadow of its former self — like the Ramussa station.

For months, rebels and troops battled hard over the bus station to gain access to the route leading out of Aleppo to other government-controlled parts of Syria.

When the evacuation deal was reached, thousands of rebels and civilians were bussed out of the then-snowy streets of Aleppo via Ramussa.

The station reopened in July, but the main garage remains almost empty save for a few charred cars and mangled metal barricades. —