Syrian and Russian forces unleashed all they could on eastern Aleppo. For four years they battled to bring Syria’s second city under Bashar al Assad’s full control.
By December 2016 when the regime finally ceased fire after a devastating siege and bombardment, civilian life there was all but extinguished.
Dr Obeid Diab wants to show us what it looks like when a barrel bomb hits.
We bump into him on the street, coming, as he often does, to check on what’s left of his apartment.
At 84 years old and smartly dressed in a long, dark overcoat, he cuts an incongruous figure against the desolate, ruined shards of destroyed buildings and the cascades of rubble.
“A barrel bomb fell here,” he says, gesturing to the wasteland. “We weren’t here thank god. We were out visiting friends.”
‘We buried children with our bare hands’
Barrel bombs are pretty much what they sound like – barrel-shaped cylinders filled with explosives, shrapnel, chemicals, whatever is to hand, dropped from a plane or helicopter.
The regime would improvise. Indiscriminate damage, minimum cost. Assad denied their use, but it was ubiquitous in Syria.
This one killed Dr Diab’s nine-year-old niece. He said he had to bury her and other children in the neighbourhood with his bare hands.
“They would hit indiscriminately. The jets would fly over and the bombs would drop. Whether or not the wind blows it here or there, you don’t know. Is there a specific target in mind? No, I don’t think so. They just hit and go.”
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The horrors didn’t end when the bombardment stopped, though he stopped working as a paediatrician for fear the regime would come after doctors who had been working in the east.
They came for him anyway, because he refused to act as an informer, he says. He was imprisoned for 50 days, a man in his 80s, then kept under house arrest.
“The prison was so dirty and so crowded. We would have to sleep on our sides, stacked up next to one another in a tiny room. And the lice and the scabies… I can’t even begin to describe it,” he says.
“I remember once seeing a friend and saying I wanted to be in the same room as him. And the officer says, ‘you want to be in the same room as him? He’s going to be locked up forever. Is that what you want?’ Detainees were just numbers to them.”
We climb the stairs towards what’s left of his apartment, past sacks of chickpeas and boxes of rice from the World Food Programme gathering dust. A pair of slippers are placed neatly beside a large carpet with UNHCR (United Nations High Commission for Refugees) written on it.
The rest is faded elegance, a hint of old Aleppo. Dr Diab has been trying to repair what he can in the back room which was most heavily damaged.
Sometimes he still sleeps in his bed though the flat is too dangerous to live in full-time. “Who in their right mind would leave their home behind?” he says.
Fears of ISIS – but hope HTS will bring stability
Everyone we meet has a story, each as horrifying as the last. Ali on the street outside is wearing a woollen beret knitted in the colours of the revolutionary flag.
He is younger, of fighting age. He looks haunted, as do the gaggle of children around him who’ve been playing in the rubble. He is their uncle.
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He says he stayed in his home on that street in eastern Aleppo all the way through the siege in 2016 and for as long as he could after that, when regime militias were in control of the area.
“We didn’t dare even walk down that road. If we did, they’d rob us, they’d take our belongings. They’d stop you, take your money and accuse you of being armed.”
He was then jailed for three years, first at the air force intelligence base in Aleppo and then with military intelligence in Damascus. When he was released they made him serve in the army. Now he is finally home.
I ask him if he thinks the fighting will stop and if he fears a resurgence of Islamic State (IS), which the US says is gathering itself for a resurgence in Syria’s north east.
“We really hope that more stability comes and that Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS) has authority over all of Syria, especially over those guys. We don’t want more problems.”
Bombed-out streets bustling again
The commerce that made Aleppo one of the world’s great historic trading cities is trickling back to the east.
Major roads are as lively and chaotic as they are in western Aleppo, bustling with traffic and stalls and people hawking all manner of goods.
But look up and the shopkeepers have wedged their awnings and their shawarma grills into broken, bombed-out buildings. Rubble and rubbish line the streets. For some reason, the beggars we see are all women.
This war claimed women and children too, but it was predominantly men who fought across the myriad of factions or who were lost to the regime’s dungeons. Perhaps that is why.
Noah, who runs a perfume shop, says business has been slow since HTS took over.
The exchange rate has seen massive fluctuations. People have been focusing on basic needs, on food and water.
The Kurdish districts in northern Aleppo are still dangerous, sniper fire from Kurdish militia who feel themselves surrounded and besieged has killed around 100 people over the past two weeks.
“It’s not super stable, people are still quite worried especially when it’s dark at night,” Noah says. “People go home as soon as the sun sets.”
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But there is hope. Outside Aleppo’s historic citadel, where HTS posed two weeks ago when they took the city before marching south on the capital, children wave the revolutionary flag and marvel at a camel and pony brought out for the tourists.
Aleppo has witnessed brutal chapters before through its long history. Hopefully the next will be less sadistic than the last.
“We were living in a grave before. It was like a rebirth.” Dr Diab told me. “Now we can smell the fresh air. It’s an indescribable feeling.”
