Aleppo still badly scarred

Neighborhoods in area that was held by rebels still look like ghost towns

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, neighborhood after neighborhood 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.

Rami Abdurrahman, director of the Britainbased Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, says thousands of people have returned to their homes in Aleppo — once Syria’s largest city — from camps for the displaced.

Russian troops mediating between the Syrian government and various opposition factions have helped. The task force’s chief in the province, Maj. Gen. Igor Yemelyanov, said it has helped 3,500 people return to nearby villages.

Although Syrian government-controlled neighborhoods did not see the destruction and loss of life on a scale comparable to what eastern Aleppo endured, the quiet neighborhoods in the west also bear the scars of conflict.

Most of the city’s power plants were in eastern Aleppo, which was captured by rebels in 2012 and suffered catastrophic destruction during the battle to recapture it. For weeks after the fighting ended, electricity was cut off across the entire city, even in government-held neighborhoods.

Moscow intervened in Syria two years ago to help Assad, its longtime ally. On Tuesday, the Russia military said Syrian troops have liberated about 85 percent of the country’s territory from militants.