Drone footage has revealed extreme devastation in eastern Aleppo, once Syria’s largest city and thriving economic center with its renowned ancient sites, with crumbling homes and deserted streets replacing a once-lively area of the city.
The video from Ruptly provides an up-close look at the destruction left behind by the militants in Aleppo neighborhoods after they were pushed out by the Syrian Army in heavy clashes. Collapsed buildings and piles of rubble dominate the landscape, with just a few lone vehicles cruising the empty streets. Buildings that were once home to dozens of apartments have been left windowless and deserted.
Meanwhile, air strikes and shelling returned to Aleppo following yesterday’s apparent victory of the Syrian regime over the rebel-held territory, stalling the planned evacuation of rebel districts in Aleppo, according to Reuters adds.
A ceasefire brokered on Tuesday by Russia, Assad’s most powerful ally, and Turkey was intended to end years of fighting in the city, giving the Syrian leader his biggest victory in more than five years of war. But air strikes, shelling and gunfire erupted on Wednesday morning and a monitoring group said the truce appeared to have collapsed.
Syrian state television said rebel shelling of the Bustan al-Qasr district, recently recaptured by the army, had killed six people. Russia said government forces were responding to rebel attacks. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said rebel resistance was likely to end in the next two or three days.
Nobody had left by dawn, according to a Reuters witness waiting at the agreed departure point. Twenty buses waited with engines running but showed no sign of moving into rebel districts. People in eastern Aleppo packed their bags and burned personal belongings, fearing looting by the Syrian army and its Iranian-backed militia allies.
Iran, one of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s main backers in the battle for Aleppo, wanted a simultaneous evacuation of wounded from the villages of Foua and Kefraya that are besieged by rebels, according to rebel and U.N. sources. Rebel groups said that was just an excuse to hold up the evacuation, which a pro-opposition TV station said could now be delayed until Thursday.
As Reuters adds, the evacuation plan was the culmination of two weeks of rapid advances by the Syrian army and its allies that drove insurgents back into an ever-smaller pocket of the city under intense air strikes and artillery fire. By taking full control of Aleppo, Assad has proved the power of his military coalition, aided by Russia’s air force and an array of Shi’ite militias from across the region.
Rebels groups have been supported by the United States, Turkey and Gulf monarchies, but the support they have enjoyed has fallen far short of the direct military backing given to Assad by Russia and Iran.
Russia regards the fall of Aleppo as a major victory against terrorists, as it and Assad characterize all the rebel groups, both Islamist and nationalist, fighting to oust him. But at the United Nations, the United States said the violence in the city, besieged and bombarded for months, represented “modern evil”.
The once-flourishing economic center with its renowned ancient sites has been pulverized during the war, which has killed hundreds of thousands of people, created the world’s worst refugee crisis. As the battle for Aleppo unfolded, global concern has risen over the plight of the 250,000 civilians who were thought to remain in its rebel-held eastern sector before the sudden army advance began at the end of November.Many of them are expected to head onward to Turkey with hopes of reaching Europe, which last year saw over a million mostly Syrian refugees make their new home away from the proxy-war emboriled country.
Tens of thousands of them fled to parts of the city held by the government or by a Kurdish militia, and tens of thousands more retreated further into the rebel enclave as it rapidly shrank under the army’s lightning advance. The rout of rebels in Aleppo sparked a mass flight of civilians and insurgents in bitter weather. There are food and water shortages in rebel areas, with all hospitals closed.