Thousands of people are starting to return to formerly rebel-held eastern Aleppo despite freezing weather and destruction “beyond imagination,” a top UN official told reporters from the Syrian city.
In the past couple of days about 2,200 families have returned to the Hanano housing district, said Sajjad Malik, country representative in Syria for the UN 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.
Photo: UNHCR via Reuters
People returning face appalling conditions.
“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 rebels in 2012 and the first to be retaken by the Syrian government on its way to seizing back full control of the northern city last month — the biggest victory for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in about six years of war.
As government forces rapidly advanced after months of fierce Syrian and Russian airstrikes, some residents stayed put, tens of thousands fled of their own accord and about 35,000 fighters and civilians were evacuated in late last months in convoys organized by the Syrian government.
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.
More than 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 rebel-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.”
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese