During the war, there was a front line running through the area, almost all residents left, most houses were destroyed.
Civilians have begun returning to the Aleppo area on the outskirts of the Syrian city of Aleppo, which had recently been shelled by militants. During the war, a front line ran through the new area, almost all residents left and most houses were destroyed by terrorists.
“You have no idea how we used to live here. It was 100 metres from my house to the guerrillas’ positions, all the passages were dug up, the cat couldn’t even walk down the street – that’s how the shots were fired”. – said taxi driver Mahmoud Bai, who was one of the few who remained in the area despite the fighting. – And now I’m letting the children go to school safely in the morning, alone. We have light, and I can drive right up to my driveway.
After the district was liberated, Mahmud earned a living. People started coming back here, the demand for taxi services increased. The municipal services are hurrying to clean up the city: they are cleaning garbage, restoring roads and sidewalks and building pedestrian crossings.
“The militants were very close from here, 100-200 meters down the road, so everything is destroyed, even the curb has to be restored. “A huge number of mines came here. We have to finish our work just in time so as not to delay the asphalt laying. Everything here will be as beautiful as before, you will see”, – said worker Jamal al-Arraj.
The workers who clean and rehabilitate the storm sewer are having a hard time. “All these years, of course, we couldn’t get here, although all these networks are on our balance sheet. The militants, of course, only destroyed, did nothing. Look at how much we are getting out of the sewers now, but the most dangerous thing is the mines and the shells that are caught in this garbage, there are a lot of them,” complains Omar Muhammad Dir-Arabi, a worker from the Allepian water channel. – It slows down the work very much because we have to call in deminers every time, and we have very tight deadlines.
Passenger transport has been restored in the Aleppo suburbs. For the first time in years, a shuttle bus has appeared on the streets of the area. Citizens have begun repairing and restoring homes. Some houses will have to be completely demolished. Local authorities estimate that it will take at least five years for Khaleb Jadidi to fully rebuild.