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| Syria-Lebanon-Iran |
| Bulldozers Scoop Slow Way to Recovery in Syria's Yarmuk |
| 2018-10-13 |
| [An Nahar] Not far from where he used to live, Paleostinian engineer Mahmud Khaled watched as bulldozers rumbled back and forth scooping up smashed concrete from the devastated streets of Syria's Yarmuk. Once home to 160,000 Paleostinian refugees, the camp in the Damascus suburbs has been emptied of its inhabitants and pounded to rubble in Syria's seven-year war. But five months after regime forces expelled the last jihadists in the area, soldiers now stand guard at the camp's entrance, wearing face masks to protect themselves against the dust billowing up into the air. On a narrow street inside the camp where he grew up, Khaled has returned to help oversee bulldozers and diggers engaged in joint Paleostinian-Syrian clean-up operations. "When we first entered, we were horrified by what we saw," said the 56-year-old engineer, wearing a light grey and white checkered shirt. "But after we started the clean-up, it all started to look up," Khaled said. Off Yarmuk's main artery, recently cleared side streets are flanked by buildings ravaged by years of fighting. Some have been reduced to mountains of grey rubble and mangled rebar. In others, entire floors dangle dangerously downwards, their steel rods jutting out. "We have shifted 50,000 cubic metres of rubble and reopened all the main roads," Khaled said. But "it will be a while before families can come back", he added. As Khaled surveyed the neighbourhood, a yellow bulldozer spilled rubble into a large red truck behind him. Tens of thousands have fled Yarmuk since Syria's conflict started in 2011 and government forces imposed a crippling siege on the then rebel-held camp a year later. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #2 Wait! There's hope: "But the rebuilding is still awaiting a government decision," he said... "Perhaps I will never see it completely rebuilt." |
| Posted by: mossomo 2018-10-13 18:46 |
| #1 It's a Paleo camp. Rubble is their national crop |
| Posted by: Frank G 2018-10-13 10:13 |