Descent into Horrors: After civil war, earthquake brings more agony to Syria's Aleppo
Aleppo is one of the oldest cities in the world to have been constantly inhabited since at least 4,000 BC. The war destroyed some of its most treasured ancient structures. Now the latest shock of the quake has flattened more buildings
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For years, the people of Aleppo bore the brunt of bombardment and fighting when their city, once Syria’s largest and most cosmopolitan, was among the civil war’s fiercest battle zones. Even that didn’t prepare them for the new devastation and terror wreaked by this week’s earthquake. AP
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The natural disaster piled on many human-made ones, multiplying the suffering in Aleppo and Syria more broadly. Fighting largely halted in Aleppo in 2016, but only a few damaged and destroyed buildings had been rebuilt. AP
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Monday’s pre-dawn 7.8-magnitude quake, centred about 70 miles (112 kilometres) away in Turkey, jolted Aleppans awake and sent them fleeing into the street under a cold winter rain. Across southern Turkey and northern Syria, more than 20,000 were killed. AP
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The shock of the quake is all too much. Dozens of buildings across the city collapsed. More than 360 people were killed in the city and hundreds of others were injured. Workers were still digging three days later through the rubble, looking for the dead and the survivors. AP
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For Aleppo, the war was a long and brutal siege. Rebels captured the eastern part of the city in 2012, soon after Syria’s civil war began. For the next years, Russian-backed government forces battled to uproot them. AP
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Syrian and Russian airstrikes and shelling flattened entire blocks. Bodies were found in the river dividing the two parts of the city. On the government-held western side, residents faced regular mortar and rocket fire from opposition fighters. AP
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A final offensive led to months of urban fighting, finally ending in December 2016 with government victory. Opposition fighters and supporters were evacuated, and government control was imposed over the entire city. Activist groups estimate some 31,000 people were killed in the four years of fighting, and almost the entire population of the eastern sector was displaced. AP
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Aleppo became a symbol of how President Bashar Assad succeeded in clawing back most opposition-held territory around Syria’s heartland with backing from Russia and Iran at the cost of horrific destruction. AP
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The opposition holds a last, small enclave in the northwest, centred on Idlib province and parts of Aleppo province, which was also devastated by Monday’s quake. But Aleppo never recovered. AP
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The city’s current population remains well below its pre-2011 population of 4.5 million. Much of the eastern sector remains in ruins and empty. Buildings damaged during the war or built shoddily during the fighting regularly collapse. AP
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Aleppo was once the industrial powerhouse of Syria, said Armenak Tokmajyan, a non-resident fellow at Carnegie Middle East who is originally from the city. Now, he said, it’s economically marginalized, basic infrastructure in gas and electricity is lacking, and its population – which had hoped for improvements after fighting ended – only saw things get worse. AFP
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