Syrians return to city shattered by war
Source: AP-EXCITE
By DIAA HADID and ALBERT AJI
HOMS, Syria (AP) — Syrians have begun trudging back into the Old City of Homs, where they dig among the ruins for the remains of lives shattered by heavy fighting and a grinding two-year siege that finally forced rebels to withdraw last month.
On one street a Syrian man strapped a red chair to his bicycle and pedaled around piles of rubble beneath buildings hollowed out by months of shelling. On another, two children in tattered clothes dragged on cigarettes as they hauled away scrap metal.
This apocalyptic landscape will be a testing ground for efforts by President Bashar Assad's government to resettle urban areas seized from the rebels and stitch Syria's shredded multi-sectarian tapestry back together, even as the uprising against him shows no sign of abating.
The government's victory in Homs, once dubbed the "capital of the revolution," came at a staggering cost. Months of heavy shelling in 2011 and 2012 gave way to a suffocating army siege in which the few thousand residents who remained in the Old City nearly starved to death, surviving for months on little more than weeds.
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Read more: http://apnews.excite.com/article/20140620/ml--syria-return_to_homs-4832936d76.html
In this June 5, 2014 photo, a man rides a bicycle through a devastated part of Homs, Syria. Syrian government forces retook the control of Homs in May 2014, after a three year battle with rebels. (AP Photo/Dusan Vranic)
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