Hope returns to eastern Aleppo – which Assad forces all but extinguished
Syrian and Russian forces unleashed all they could on eastern Aleppo. For four years they battled to bring Syria’s second city under Bashar al Assad’s full control.
By December 2016 when the regime finally ceased fire after a devastating siege and bombardment, civilian life there was all but extinguished.
Dr Obeid Diab wants to show us what it looks like when a barrel bomb hits.
We bump into him on the street, coming, as he often does, to check on what’s left of his apartment.
At 84 years old and smartly dressed in a long, dark overcoat, he cuts an incongruous figure against the desolate, ruined shards of destroyed buildings and the cascades of rubble.
“A barrel bomb fell here,” he says, gesturing to the wasteland. “We weren’t here thank god. We were out visiting friends.”
Dr Obeid Diab
‘We buried children with our bare hands’
Barrel bombs are pretty much what they sound like – barrel-shaped cylinders filled with explosives, shrapnel, chemicals, whatever is to hand, dropped from a plane or helicopter.
The regime would improvise. Indiscriminate damage, minimum cost. Assad denied their use, but it was ubiquitous in Syria.
This one killed Dr Diab’s nine-year-old niece. He said he had to bury her and other children in the neighbourhood with his bare hands.
“They would hit indiscriminately. The jets would fly over and the bombs would drop. Whether or not the wind blows it here or there, you don’t know. Is there a specific target in mind? No, I don’t think so. They just hit and go.”
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The horrors didn’t end when the bombardment stopped, though he stopped working as a paediatrician for fear the regime would come after doctors who had been working in the east.
They came for him anyway, because he refused to act as an informer, he says. He was imprisoned for 50 days, a man in his 80s, then kept under house arrest.
“The prison was so dirty and so crowded. We would have to sleep on our sides, stacked up next to one another in a tiny room. And the lice and the scabies… I can’t even begin to describe it,” he says.
“I remember once seeing a friend and saying I wanted to be in the same room as him. And the officer says, ‘you want to be in the same room as him? He’s going to be locked up forever. Is that what you want?’ Detainees were just numbers to them.”
Dr Obeid Diab walks to check on his apartment
We climb the stairs towards what’s left of his apartment, past sacks of chickpeas and boxes of rice from the World Food Programme gathering dust. A pair of slippers are placed neatly beside a large carpet with UNHCR (United Nations High Commission for Refugees) written on it.
The rest is faded elegance, a hint of old Aleppo. Dr Diab has been trying to repair what he can in the back room which was most heavily damaged.
Sometimes he still sleeps in his bed though the flat is too dangerous to live in full-time. “Who in their right mind would leave their home behind?” he says.
A man pushes his goods along an empty street in eastern Aleppo
Fears of ISIS – but hope HTS will bring stability
Everyone we meet has a story, each as horrifying as the last. Ali on the street outside is wearing a woollen beret knitted in the colours of the revolutionary flag.
He is younger, of fighting age. He looks haunted, as do the gaggle of children around him who’ve been playing in the rubble. He is their uncle.
He says he stayed in his home on that street in eastern Aleppo all the way through the siege in 2016 and for as long as he could after that, when regime militias were in control of the area.
“We didn’t dare even walk down that road. If we did, they’d rob us, they’d take our belongings. They’d stop you, take your money and accuse you of being armed.”
A little girl waves Syria’s revolutionary flag in eastern Aleppo
He was then jailed for three years, first at the air force intelligence base in Aleppo and then with military intelligence in Damascus. When he was released they made him serve in the army. Now he is finally home.
I ask him if he thinks the fighting will stop and if he fears a resurgence of Islamic State (IS), which the US says is gathering itself for a resurgence in Syria’s north east.
“We really hope that more stability comes and that Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS) has authority over all of Syria, especially over those guys. We don’t want more problems.”
Buildings destroyed by barrel bombs
Bombed-out streets bustling again
The commerce that made Aleppo one of the world’s great historic trading cities is trickling back to the east.
Major roads are as lively and chaotic as they are in western Aleppo, bustling with traffic and stalls and people hawking all manner of goods.
But look up and the shopkeepers have wedged their awnings and their shawarma grills into broken, bombed-out buildings. Rubble and rubbish line the streets. For some reason, the beggars we see are all women.
This war claimed women and children too, but it was predominantly men who fought across the myriad of factions or who were lost to the regime’s dungeons. Perhaps that is why.
Local children play among the rubble
Children on the street in eastern Aleppo
Noah, who runs a perfume shop, says business has been slow since HTS took over.
The exchange rate has seen massive fluctuations. People have been focusing on basic needs, on food and water.
The Kurdish districts in northern Aleppo are still dangerous, sniper fire from Kurdish militia who feel themselves surrounded and besieged has killed around 100 people over the past two weeks.
“It’s not super stable, people are still quite worried especially when it’s dark at night,” Noah says. “People go home as soon as the sun sets.”
But there is hope. Outside Aleppo’s historic citadel, where HTS posed two weeks ago when they took the city before marching south on the capital, children wave the revolutionary flag and marvel at a camel and pony brought out for the tourists.
Aleppo has witnessed brutal chapters before through its long history. Hopefully the next will be less sadistic than the last.
“We were living in a grave before. It was like a rebirth.” Dr Diab told me. “Now we can smell the fresh air. It’s an indescribable feeling.”
A group of school children in their smart uniforms skip past us, overseen by their mums and dads.
In front of us, the highway is empty of all cars except for two armoured police vehicles slowly making their way up a hill.
The children and their parents are on “Airport Road”, which leads into the centre of Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti. The airport is a few miles away to the north.
The parents are leading the children to an intersection where they will turn right towards their homes.
Police use heavily-armoured vehicles to patrol in Port-au-Prince
Everything beyond that intersection is gang territory, and nobody ventures past it but the police, who appear to be probing the gangs’ defences.
This part of the Airport Road, beyond the intersection and stretching for miles, is an area controlled by the gangster Jimmy Cherizier, known here and abroad as “Barbecue”.
The security forces are desperate to capture Barbecue, himself a former policeman, and to dismantle his gang.
A boy sleeps at the bottom of a staircase inside a displacement camp
As the families near the intersection, automatic gunfire bursts from the turret of one of the armoured police vehicles. Instantly the children and their parents run for safety, hugging a wall – they know what is about to happen.
Within seconds the police are being attacked with volleys of machine gun fire. We watch holding our breaths, and thankfully all the children make it round the corner to the relative safety of a side street.
They live on the edge of what’s called the “red zone” where the gangs control the streets.
Security forces want to take it back.
Getting out of the cars would be suicide for police officers
The first armoured police vehicle makes it into Barbecue’s territory unscathed, but the second vehicle is hit.
One of its tyres is punctured, so they have no choice but to turn back.
The firing intensifies as the police vehicle makes its way down the hill, and we can hear the crack of bullets as the gangs target the police.
My team and I are travelling in two separate armoured 4x4s. The police are the targets, and we are filming their exchanges with gang members hidden up the hill and in side streets, firing from multiple positions.
As the police vehicle nears the intersection once again, it comes under sustained fire.
At this point the streets and the intersection are completely empty of people and traffic, anyone in the vicinity has taken cover.
A stray round passes uncomfortably close by our team still outside the vehicles, so we decide it’s time to go, and reverse as the armoured police vehicle loses its tyre, rolling forward on its rim.
Children caught in the crossfire in Port-au-Prince
Getting out would be suicidal for the police. The vehicle limps towards another crossroads to get away from the firing.
This, I’m told, is just an ordinary day in Port-au-Prince.
Nobody can fully agree on a number, but by most estimates, the gangs control around 90% of Port-au-Prince now. People don’t venture into their areas, and cars turn away from the boundaries to avoid being hit by sniper fire from inside or being caught in the crossfire.
Barbara Gashiwi and baby Jenna
Hundreds of thousands of Haitians have lost their homes, and many now find themselves in heaving makeshift displacement camps. They huddle for protection, but in reality there really isn’t much on offer.
In a narrow alleyway in a camp set up in the grounds of a church, I meet Barbara Gashiwi, a new mum. She gave birth to her daughter Jenna a month ago, beneath the plastic sheets where she still sits.
Barbara was forced out of her home by the gangs days before she was due to give birth.
Barbara Gashiwi tells Sky News she doesn’t think she’ll ever be able to go home
“They pulled guns on us and told us to give up the house, after that we ran outside on to the street and took off,” she told me.
She says she doesn’t think she will ever go back to her home again. Very few of the 10,500 people living in this one displacement camp believe they will ever go home.
The gang warfare has left some Port-au-Prince streets completely derelict
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A year ago, we visited displaced Haitians living inside the government’s communication ministry.
At the time we walked in off the street, but this time we could barely move for the crowds – the forecourt is now a camp too, and the difference is stark.
The government has abandoned this and other ministries, moving higher up to safer ground, leaving whole communities on their own.
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March 2024: Thousands flee Haiti violence
The gangs’ lawless, and often murderous, activity means that the roughly 10% of Port-au-Prince still free is packed with people and traffic.
Just a few districts in Port-au-Prince are left, and they’re completed surrounded, leaving the people who live in this city squeezed into the only places that haven’t fallen.
The few free districts in the capital are packed with people and traffic
It’s hard to describe the claustrophobia and tension that pervades life here.
And with everything else happening in the world right now, the people of Haiti feel they’ve been abandoned, and are condemned to live their lives under the rule of the gun.
Stuart Ramsay reports from Haiti with camera operator Toby Nash, senior foreign producer Dominique Van Heerden, and producers Brunelie Joseph and David Montgomery.
Donald Trump has said there is a “good chance” of peace between Russia and Ukraine – but added the US has a red line in upcoming talks.
After a two-hour phone call with Vladimir Putin, the US president announced on Monday that Russia–Ukraine discussions will begin “immediately”.
It is unclear how these will differ from negotiations that already started in Turkey last Friday.
Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office later on Monday, Mr Trump said he does have a red line on when he’ll stop pushing Moscow and Kyiv for peace – but would not say what it is.
There are “big egos involved”, he said before adding: “This was a European situation, it should have remained a European situation.”
The US president also claimed he asked Mr Putin on their call: “When are we going to end this bloodbath?”
He said of the Russian president: “I do believe he wants to end [the war].”
“My whole life is deals, one big deal, and if I thought that President Putin did not want to get this over with, I wouldn’t even be talking about it because I’d just pull out,” he added.
The US president spoke to his Russian counterpart on Monday as part of a bid to push the two countries towards agreeing a truce in the war.
Donald Trump speaking in the Oval Office on Monday. Pic: AP
In a Truth Social post, published shortly after the call, Mr Trump said Russia and Ukraine “will immediately start negotiations towards a ceasefire and, more importantly, an end to the war”.
Mr Trump continued: “Russia wants to do large-scale trade with the United States when this catastrophic ‘bloodbath’ is over, and I agree.
“There is a tremendous opportunity for Russia to create massive amounts of jobs and wealth. Its potential is unlimited.”
Vladimir Putin at a meeting in Moscow last week. Pic: AP
Ukraine “can be a great beneficiary on trade, in the process of rebuilding its country”, he said.
The Vatican “has stated that it would be very interested in hosting the negotiations”, Mr Trump added. He signed off his post with: “Let the process begin!”
Mr Putin found the call “informative, frank and very useful”, Russian news agency RIA reported.
“A ceasefire in the situation in Ukraine for a certain period of time is possible if appropriate agreements are reached,” the Russian leader reportedly said.
Discussions are ‘positive,’ says Zelenskyy
The US president spoke separately to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and various European leaders.
At a briefing after the day’s calls had taken place, Ukraine’s leader said he told Mr Trump that Russia “might propose some particularly difficult conditions” for a ceasefire – which could be “a sign that it is the Russian side that is unwilling to end the war”.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy speaks to reporters after his own call with Mr Trump. Pic: Reuters
“I think we are still discussing the very possibility of strong and severe sanctions [on Russia],” he continued. “I don’t yet have an answer to that question.”
Kyiv is considering the possibility of a meeting between “high-level” teams from Ukraine, the US, Russia and some European countries, Mr Zelenskyy said, describing the talks on Monday as “positive”.
He continued: “Such a meeting could take place in Turkey, the Vatican, or Switzerland. We are currently considering these three venues, as all three countries – all three venues – are neutral.”
European leaders and Ukraine have demanded Russia agree to a ceasefire immediately, and Mr Trump has focused on getting Mr Putin to commit to a 30-day truce. The Russian president has resisted that, insisting that conditions be met first.
The Trump-Putin call came as Russia has continued to target Ukraine with attacks.
Moscow on Monday claimed its forces have taken two villages in Ukraine, according to state news agency RIA.
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Russia recently began pushing into the Sumy region after claiming it had ousted Kyiv’s forces from Russia’s neighbouring Kursk region.
RIA cited the defence ministry as saying Novoolenivka, in the eastern Donetsk region, and Marine, in Sumy, have now been taken by Russian forces.
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Russia launches war’s largest drone attack
Ukraine’s air force said Russia launched 112 drones over various parts of the country overnight, killing two people and leaving another 13 injured.
On Sunday, Kyiv officials said Russia had launched the largest drone attack of the war so far by firing 273 explosives into Ukraine over the course of Saturday night into the following morning.
Israel has said it will allow a “basic quantity of food” into the besieged enclave of Gaza to avoid a “starvation crisis” following a near three-month blockade.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said the decision was “based on the operational need to enable the expansion of the military operation to defeat Hamas“.
Gaza, where local authorities say more than 53,000 people have died in Israel’s 19-month campaign, has been under a complete blockade on humanitarian aid since 2 March.
It comes as global food security experts warn of famine across the territory and after a UN-backed report from last Monday which warned one in five people in Gaza were facing starvation.
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Israel ramps up bombing in Gaza
The statement from the prime minister’s office said it would “allow a basic quantity of food to be brought in for the population in order to make certain that no starvation crisis develops in the Gaza Strip”.
“Such a crisis would endanger the continuation of Operation ‘Gideon’s Chariots’ to defeat Hamas,” it added.
“Israel will act to deny Hamas’s ability to take control of the distribution of humanitarian assistance in order to ensure that the assistance does not reach the Hamas terrorists.”
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Gaza is ‘a slaughterhouse’ says surgeon
It comes after a British surgeon working in Gaza said in a video to Sky News the enclave is now “a slaughterhouse” amid Israeli bombardment.
Israel has just ramped up its offensive in Gaza – where it’s been conducting a military campaign in retaliation for 1,200 people killed and 251 taken hostage by Hamas on 7 October 2023 – with Palestinian health officials reporting at least 130 people were killed overnight into Sunday.
Israel Defence Forces (IDF) confirmed troops had begun “extensive ground operations throughout the northern and southern Gaza Strip”.
The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza said 464 people had died in Israeli military strikes in the week to Sunday.
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In a statement on Sunday, IDF said its air force struck “over 670 Hamas terror targets throughout the Gaza Strip to disrupt enemy preparations and support ground operations” over the past week.
Israel has launched an escalation to increase pressure on Hamas, seize territory, displace Palestinians to the south and take greater control over the distribution of aid.
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