As fighting subsides, Aleppo residents find little left
December 5, 2012 -- Updated 1236 GMT (2036 HKT)
Children fight for food in Aleppo
Editor's note: CNN's
Arwa Damon and crew are some of the few international reporters in
Syria, which has been restricting access of foreign journalists and
refusing many of them entry. Read more from CNN inside Syria.
Aleppo, Syria (CNN) -- In a small village outside of
Aleppo where we are hunkered down for the night, our host apologizes
profusely. He doesn't have enough blankets for us and it's bitterly
cold.
He and his family were
forced to flee their home in the city to their unfurnished, humble
residence in the countryside with nothing but the clothes they could
carry. He spent 25,000 Syrian pounds -- around $300 -- to pay a truck
driver just to bring out the bedroom furniture and a TV from their
Aleppo home.
He couldn't afford another run.
We went to stay with his
brother, who was also full of apologies because he couldn't offer us
tea. The power was out and there was no cooking gas.
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In the dark, we chatted
about the situation in Aleppo, Syria's largest city. There, airstrikes
have transformed buildings into heaps of rubble, and most of the city is
now under rebel control. Many Aleppo residents fled when the fighting
began, finding themselves crowded into relatives' homes or in refugee
camps as winter set in.
The bitter cold and
financial hardships brought them back. Others, like this family,
returned only to retrieve some belongings and then quickly left again.
In Aleppo, the battle
lines are fluid and, in some neighborhoods, snipers are a constant
danger. Where the fighting has subsided, there are other threats.
"The incredible cost of
living is causing a lot of problems," our host's brother told us.
"Criminality has gone up significantly. Each day we are catching
thieves, even young boys. People are hungry and cold."
The cost of a canister
of cooking gas in this village jumped from 450 pounds to 3,500 -- from
about $5 to $45 -- and that's when it's available.
"If the situation doesn't improve soon, people are going to start tearing each other apart," he laments.
Skyrocketing food prices
and shortages mean some Syrian children are eating only one small meal a
day, if that. Residents in one Aleppo neighborhood have taken matters
into their own hands, collecting money to buy food for the neediest --
but it's never enough.
Children elbow and shove
each other, the smaller ones trying to wiggle through for a ladleful of
cracked wheat cooked in a huge vat in the middle of the street by the
neighborhood volunteers.
Amid the chaos, little
hands try desperately to grab small bags of hummus passing overhead. A
block away, residents clamor for bread.
Fatme waited in line for
three hours. She had fled Aleppo with her family, and returned a month
ago when they thought it might be safe. They were wrong. Her husband was
wounded by shrapnel in an explosion shortly afterward.
"Of course I am afraid," Fatme said. "But what can I do? Are my children not going to eat?"
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Across the city, what were once staples are now luxuries.
A child carries away two
bowls with the burnt remains of the cracked wheat. It's all too much
for one of the volunteers, Abu Abdo.
"Until when are we going to live like this?" he cries. "Look, people are eating burnt food!"
Everywhere in Aleppo, there is evidence that the fighting has taken a heavy toll on the most vulnerable.
Close to the bombed-out
Dar el-Shifa hospital -- once the city's main field clinic, now a pile
of debris -- families pick their way through rubble. Some stop and peer
up at what is left, expressions of shock and deep sorrow etched across
their faces.
Few are able to comprehend what has become their reality.
Hamza, 14, gathers with
other children near a massive crater filled with grimy water from a
burst water main, exploded in a blast a few days before. His parents
sent him to fill a container with water after an airstrike cut off their
supply.
He speaks softly, his arm in a sling.
"I was wounded in a strike in the village we fled to," he says simply.
Gunfire rings out on the
streets of Sakhour, an Aleppo neighborhood that regime forces hope to
retake so they can cut off a main artery for opposition forces and
reopen a route to Aleppo's airport. Amid the street fighting, a group of
women invite me into a house, venting their frustrations and anger.
"We know freedom has a price, but how long can we keep on living like this?" one woman asks.
Another tells of how her roof caved in from an explosion.
"Each time I hear one, I look up and expect to die."
She and her family moved around three times before they ran out of money.
"At least if there was work, anything, it would be a little easier," she says.
We know freedom has a price, but how long can we keep on living like this?
woman from Aleppo, Syria
woman from Aleppo, Syria
For many children here,
gunfire has become background noise. Khawle, 12, sits on the sidewalk,
cradling a neighbor's infant daughter. She doesn't move or stop talking
as the gunfire intensifies, simply hugging the baby and rocking back and
forth.
Others flinch at the sound of each pop and blast of weapons.
Every time Saleh Hadidi leaves his house, his 4-year-old daugher clutches his leg and begs him not to go.
Metal rods protrude from
his bandaged arm, a bullet wound he sustained at a government
checkpoint that he says was meant for his daughter.
"She was sitting in the
front (of the car) when the gunfire started and I put my arm around
her," he recalled. "She was drenched in my blood, and the soldiers were
screaming, accusing me of being a rebel fighter. They held a gun to my
head three, four times and she was screaming, 'Daddy!'"
The girl flinches and clasps her hands, looking away as her father recounts that day.
As we leave a woman whispers to me, "Sometimes I want to die rather than live like this."
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