After more than four years of brutal street fighting and punishing aerial bombardments, the staggering extent of destruction in Aleppo begins to emerge- Tens of thousands of homes and apartments are uninhabitable, most factories have been looted or destroyed and some ancient landmarks have been reduced to rubble.
Reconstruction would likely take years and cost tens of billions of dollars, experts say. Some of Aleppo's centuries-old cultural heritage may have been lost for good. And healing the wounds in a city once split between a wealthier, pro-government west and a poorer, pro-rebel east could take even greater effort.
Damage assessments emerged as the Syrian government announced Thursday that it had assumed full control of the city- a significant victory in a nearly six-year battle with an armed opposition trying to unseat President Bashar Al Assad. In recent months, rebels rapidly lost ground in the city as Assad and military allies Russia and Iran stepped up attacks.
Located at the crossroads of ancient trade routes, Aleppo was Syria's biggest city before the war, with more than 3 million residents and a world-famous cuisine. It served as the country's industrial hub, home to factories producing textiles, plastics and pharmaceuticals. Its ancient centre, recognized as a World Heritage site, drew large numbers of tourists.
Today, Aleppo "resembles those cities that were stricken during World War II," said Maamoun Abdul-Karim, head of the government's museums and archaeology department. The scale of devastation has already evoked comparisons with cities like Grozny and Dresden.
But the destruction isn't spread evenly.
Areas once held by the opposition suffered severe damage after being bombarded for months by Syrian and Russian warplanes. Some eastern neighbourhoods look like they have been hit by an earthquake.
In parts of the government-held west, life seemed almost normal. Children attended schools, adults went to work and restaurants and coffee shops were packed. Crude weapons used by the rebels, including mortars and home-made "hell cannons," caused some damage and casualties in government-held areas closer to the front lines.
UN satellite images identified more than 33,500 damaged residential buildings in the city, with the most recent photos taken in mid-September, according to a map published this week. A majority of the buildings would have been multi-unit apartment blocks common in Aleppo, said Olivier Vandamme, an official at the UN agency that provided the map.
The map indicated that the most intense damage occurred in rebel-held areas. The analysis only considered residential areas and excluded industrial zones. After the images were taken, the Syrian government and its allies intensified bombardments in the final phase of the Aleppo offensive.
A Syrian urban consultant said Aleppo had a pre-war stock of about 550,000 housing units, with a total value of about $50bn. The fighting in the city may have caused close to $25bn in loss of housing, said the consultant, who is involved in data collection and requested anonymity because of what he said was a highly politicized debate over the scope of destruction. About 70% to 80% of the destruction was in the east, with the rest in Kurdish and pro-government areas, he said.
The consultant estimated that over 60% of the homes and apartments in Aleppo are still inhabitable, including those with partial damage. Reconstruction would cost between $35bn and $40bn, he said.
Some 250,000 people could potentially return to the devastated east, once home to 1.5m, and find shelter there by bricking up holes in walls and replacing shattered windows with plastic sheets. Aleppo's industrial base was largely wiped out, including by looting, the consultant said. Before the war, close to 5,000 small and mid-sized enterprises had industrial licenses in Aleppo, he said.
