Families sifted through the bombed-out ruins of their shops and homes on Thursday in the front-line Syrian town of Balyoun, using a fragile cease-fire between Russia and Turkey to retrieve their belongings but voicing little trust that it would last, The New York Times reported.
“We will never come back,” said Isam Alloush, a flash of sorrow crossing his face.
His truck was piled high with mattresses and a galvanized water tank he was taking to a camp near the Turkish border, where eight members of his family are living in a tent. “It’s a big lie,” he said of the cease-fire. “They have been cheating us for years.”
Balyoun is one of a line of ghostly, battered towns and villages across the southern half of Idlib Province, emptied of their inhabitants over three months as Syrian government forces, backed by Russian air power, blasted their way northward in an effort to seize control of the last rebel-held region in Syria.
South of the city of Idlib, the towns and villages were mostly deserted, the smashed buildings and shrapnel scars on walls clear signs of the heavy aerial bombardment and artillery fire over the last several weeks.
Residents gathering their belongings said they had fled the bombardment in a rush and were now living in tents or the shells of buildings near the Turkish border. Nearly one million people have been displaced in the past three months, most of them now crammed into a narrow stretch a few miles deep along the border.
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