Residents returning to east Aleppo find destruction 'beyond imagination'

The cleanup has begun in eastern Aleppo as thousands of residents of the formerly rebel-held city return to figure out howto "rebuild their lives and livelihoods,'' a United Nationsofficial says.

The Syrian government only recently retook full control of thedivided city, whichwas under siege for more than four years while forces loyal to President Basharal-Assad battled acollection of rebel groups.

As government forces closed in last month under heavy airstrikes, tens of thousands of residents fled of their own accord, followed by around 35,000 civilians and opposition fighters who were bused out of the eastern districts amid a sputtering ceasefire in the final weeks of 2016.

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"The destruction is enormous," says Sajjad Malik, representative in Syria for the United Nations HighCommissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), andacting humanitarian co-ordinator in Aleppo. "The reconstruction will take a very long time."

While UN agencies don't have exact numbers, Malik estimates that some 1.5 million peopleare in Aleppo now, including 400,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs).

In the past couple of days around 2,200 families havereturned to the Hanano neighbourhood, as the UN works with the local municipality to clear rubble and debris from the main roads.

'Bitterly cold'

People returning face appalling conditions.

"It is extremely, bitterly cold here," said Malik. "Thehouses people are going back to have no windows or doors, nocooking facilities."

Theimmediate priority is to keep people warm and fed.The UN is giving peoplemats, sleeping bags and plasticsheets to cover blown-out windows.

The UN and its partners are also providing some 20,000 people with twice-daily hot meals and 40,000 with fresh-baked bread, according toMalik,who spoke via phone from Aleppo.

Malik said seven mobile medical clinicsnow travel in and out of eastern Aleppo on a daily basis, while1,381 people considered critical have been transported to western Aleppo for treatment.

More than 10,000 children have been vaccinated against polio, and more than1.1 million peoplehave access to safe drinking water again, Malik said.

Meanwhile in the capital, Damascus, residents are scrambling for clean water in ashortage that has stretched nearly two weeks amid fighting in that city betweengovernment and rebel forces.

Destruction 'beyond imagination'

Bombing has destroyed hospitals, schools, roads and houses,and damaged the two main water pumping stations. The UNofficial said the level of destruction surpassed anythinghe had seen in conflict zones like Afghanistan and Somalia.

Once the economic hub of Syria, there are hardly any shops left. Businessesare destroyed, and the jobs gone with them, Malik said.

"Nothing would have prepared us to see the scale ofdestruction there, it's beyond imagination," he said.

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He saidofficials have also begun tackling the huge backlog of registrations births, deaths and marriages which were not officially recorded while the fighting was ongoing in the rebel-held sector.

''This will reduce the risk of statelessness that otherwise we would have in eastern Aleppo,'' he said.

Malikhas spoken with relatives still ''looking for their male family members'' who were either detained or arrested as they fled the besieged eastern part of the city. And he saysyears of conflict have also ''resulted in huge psychological problems for the population there.''

Still, inrecent days, Malik says, he and his staff of 106 men and women have noticed a difference in the population. ''I saw many children playing out on the street happy but there's a lot more that we still need to do," he said.

''So many hopes of the Syrians have been dashed before,'' Malik said. ''But this time, somehow, they feel that maybe the international community will stick around.''