BEIRUT: Thousands of people are starting to return to formerly opposition-held east Aleppo despite freezing weather and destruction “beyond imagination,” a top UN official told Reuters from the Syrian city.
In the last couple of days around 2,200 families have returned to the Hanano housing district, said Sajjad Malik, country representative in Syria for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
“People are coming out to east Aleppo to see their shops, their houses, to see if the building is standing and the house is not that looted ... to see, should they come back,” he said in an interview.
But given the appalling conditions, the UN is not encouraging people to return.
“It is extremely, bitterly cold here,” said Malik. “The houses people are going back to have no windows or doors, no cooking facilities.”
Aid is vital to prevent more deaths. The UN is helping people to restart their lives in one room of their apartments to start with, he said, giving them mats, sleeping bags and plastic sheets to cover blown-out windows.
Hanano was one of the first Aleppo neighborhoods to fall to the opposition in 2012, and the first to be retaken by the Syrian regime on its way to seizing back full control of the northern city last month — the biggest victory for President Bashar Assad in nearly six years of war.
As regime forces rapidly advanced, some residents stayed put, tens of thousands fled of their own accord and around 35,000 fighters and civilians were evacuated in late December in convoys organized by the Syrian regime.
After months of fierce Syrian and Russian airstrikes, reconstruction will take a long time, Malik said, but the immediate priority is to keep people warm and fed. UN-supported partners provide hot meals twice a day to 21,000 people, and 40,000 people get baked bread every day.
Over 1.1 million people once again have access to clean water in bottles or through tankers and wells.
Mobile clinics are up and running, and more than 10,000 children have received polio vaccinations. Thousands of children who have not been able to attend school need reintegrating into the education system through remedial classes to rebuild their confidence, Malik said.
There was no register of births, deaths and marriages in the opposition-held sector, so the UN is working with the government to issue people with papers. “I met a woman with five children and she was excited that she now has her kids registered as Syrians. She has ID cards and a family book,” he said.
Bombing has destroyed hospitals, schools, roads and houses, and damaged the two main water-pumping stations. The experienced UN official said the level of destruction surpassed anything he had seen in conflict zones like Afghanistan and Somalia.
“Nothing would have prepared us to see the scale of destruction there, it’s beyond imagination.”
Meanwhile, Turkey warned on Wednesday that repeated cease-fire violations by Syrian regime were threatening peace talks scheduled for later this month.
Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said the talks in Kazakhstan were scheduled for Jan. 23, to be preceded by preparatory meetings between Turkish and Russian “experts” in Turkey.
The Syrian regime and allied militias have pressed on with an offensive to take the Barada Valley outside Damascus from opposition fighters despite a cease-fire agreement signed shortly before the new year. The government says the region was never included in the agreement.
Opposition fighters have retaliated with shelling and raids on regime-held areas in other parts of the country.
The fighters also accuse the government of carrying out air raids in the opposition-held province of Idlib, where hundreds of thousands of civilians have sought refuge.
Cavusoglu called on Iran, a key ally of Syrian President Bashar Assad and one of the guarantors of the agreement, to address the violations by pro-government forces. Turkey supports the Syrian opposition.
The cease-fire was supposed to prepare the way for the talks in the Kazakh capital of Astana, in what would be the first substantial diplomatic movement toward ending the conflict in nearly a year. Russia, Turkey, and Iran had agreed to broker those talks. Russia is also a key ally of Assad.
Cavusoglu warned the Astana process “might fail if we cannot stop the escalating violations,” in remarks made to Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency.
The foreign minister also said he had received assurances from Russia that the Kurdish Syrian PYD party would not be invited to Astana. Turkey considers the party and its armed wing an extension of its own, outlawed Kurdish insurgency and classifies it as a terror organization.
The PYD controls most of the Syrian-Turkish frontier. Its armed wing enjoys the backing of the US military, and is the most effective ground force battling the Daesh group in Syria.
In another development, airstrikes on a building in northern Syria used by fighters killed at least 30 people and wounded dozens more on Tuesday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
The Britain-based Observatory said it was unclear whether the strikes near Sarmada in the countryside of the northwestern province of Idlib had been carried out by aircraft belonging to Russia or to the US-led coalition.
Tuesday was the fifth day of a cease-fire in Syria but its sponsors, Russia and Turkey, say this excluded Daesh and the Syrian militia Jabhat Fateh Al-Sham, formerly called Al-Nusra Front.
Abu Anas Al-Shami, a Jabhat Fateh Al-Sham spokesman, said the attack was carried out by the international coalition. More than 20 people were killed, he said.
“The headquarters targeted by the international coalition a short time ago are main headquarters for that area and contains a number branch offices, leading to the killing of the brothers,” he said in a statement.
The Observatory reported that some of the casualties were detainees being held in the building, but the Jabhat Fateh Al-Sham spokesman denied that it was used as a prison.
The Observatory said eight Jabhat Fateh Al-Sham fighters and leaders have been killed in airstrikes around opposition-held Idlib in January.
In the last couple of days around 2,200 families have returned to the Hanano housing district, said Sajjad Malik, country representative in Syria for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
“People are coming out to east Aleppo to see their shops, their houses, to see if the building is standing and the house is not that looted ... to see, should they come back,” he said in an interview.
But given the appalling conditions, the UN is not encouraging people to return.
“It is extremely, bitterly cold here,” said Malik. “The houses people are going back to have no windows or doors, no cooking facilities.”
Aid is vital to prevent more deaths. The UN is helping people to restart their lives in one room of their apartments to start with, he said, giving them mats, sleeping bags and plastic sheets to cover blown-out windows.
Hanano was one of the first Aleppo neighborhoods to fall to the opposition in 2012, and the first to be retaken by the Syrian regime on its way to seizing back full control of the northern city last month — the biggest victory for President Bashar Assad in nearly six years of war.
As regime forces rapidly advanced, some residents stayed put, tens of thousands fled of their own accord and around 35,000 fighters and civilians were evacuated in late December in convoys organized by the Syrian regime.
After months of fierce Syrian and Russian airstrikes, reconstruction will take a long time, Malik said, but the immediate priority is to keep people warm and fed. UN-supported partners provide hot meals twice a day to 21,000 people, and 40,000 people get baked bread every day.
Over 1.1 million people once again have access to clean water in bottles or through tankers and wells.
Mobile clinics are up and running, and more than 10,000 children have received polio vaccinations. Thousands of children who have not been able to attend school need reintegrating into the education system through remedial classes to rebuild their confidence, Malik said.
There was no register of births, deaths and marriages in the opposition-held sector, so the UN is working with the government to issue people with papers. “I met a woman with five children and she was excited that she now has her kids registered as Syrians. She has ID cards and a family book,” he said.
Bombing has destroyed hospitals, schools, roads and houses, and damaged the two main water-pumping stations. The experienced UN official said the level of destruction surpassed anything he had seen in conflict zones like Afghanistan and Somalia.
“Nothing would have prepared us to see the scale of destruction there, it’s beyond imagination.”
Meanwhile, Turkey warned on Wednesday that repeated cease-fire violations by Syrian regime were threatening peace talks scheduled for later this month.
Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said the talks in Kazakhstan were scheduled for Jan. 23, to be preceded by preparatory meetings between Turkish and Russian “experts” in Turkey.
The Syrian regime and allied militias have pressed on with an offensive to take the Barada Valley outside Damascus from opposition fighters despite a cease-fire agreement signed shortly before the new year. The government says the region was never included in the agreement.
Opposition fighters have retaliated with shelling and raids on regime-held areas in other parts of the country.
The fighters also accuse the government of carrying out air raids in the opposition-held province of Idlib, where hundreds of thousands of civilians have sought refuge.
Cavusoglu called on Iran, a key ally of Syrian President Bashar Assad and one of the guarantors of the agreement, to address the violations by pro-government forces. Turkey supports the Syrian opposition.
The cease-fire was supposed to prepare the way for the talks in the Kazakh capital of Astana, in what would be the first substantial diplomatic movement toward ending the conflict in nearly a year. Russia, Turkey, and Iran had agreed to broker those talks. Russia is also a key ally of Assad.
Cavusoglu warned the Astana process “might fail if we cannot stop the escalating violations,” in remarks made to Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency.
The foreign minister also said he had received assurances from Russia that the Kurdish Syrian PYD party would not be invited to Astana. Turkey considers the party and its armed wing an extension of its own, outlawed Kurdish insurgency and classifies it as a terror organization.
The PYD controls most of the Syrian-Turkish frontier. Its armed wing enjoys the backing of the US military, and is the most effective ground force battling the Daesh group in Syria.
In another development, airstrikes on a building in northern Syria used by fighters killed at least 30 people and wounded dozens more on Tuesday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
The Britain-based Observatory said it was unclear whether the strikes near Sarmada in the countryside of the northwestern province of Idlib had been carried out by aircraft belonging to Russia or to the US-led coalition.
Tuesday was the fifth day of a cease-fire in Syria but its sponsors, Russia and Turkey, say this excluded Daesh and the Syrian militia Jabhat Fateh Al-Sham, formerly called Al-Nusra Front.
Abu Anas Al-Shami, a Jabhat Fateh Al-Sham spokesman, said the attack was carried out by the international coalition. More than 20 people were killed, he said.
“The headquarters targeted by the international coalition a short time ago are main headquarters for that area and contains a number branch offices, leading to the killing of the brothers,” he said in a statement.
The Observatory reported that some of the casualties were detainees being held in the building, but the Jabhat Fateh Al-Sham spokesman denied that it was used as a prison.
The Observatory said eight Jabhat Fateh Al-Sham fighters and leaders have been killed in airstrikes around opposition-held Idlib in January.
