HOMS, Syria (AP) — Hundreds of Syrians, some snapping
photographs with their cell phones, wandered down paths carved out of
rubble in the old quarters of Homs on Friday, getting their first
glimpse of the horrendous destruction that two years of fighting
inflicted on rebel-held parts of the city.
The scenes that greeted
them were devastating: City blocks pounded into an apocalyptic vista of
hollow facades of blown-out buildings. Streets strewn with rebar,
shattered concrete bricks, toppled telephone poles and the occasional
charred, crumpled carcasses of cars. Dust everywhere.
For more
than a year, President Bashar Assad’s troops blockaded these
neighborhoods, pounding the rebel bastions with his artillery and air
force. Under a deal struck this week, the government assumed control of
the old quarters, while in return some 2,000 rebel fighters were granted
safe passage to opposition areas north of Homs.
The final piece
of the agreement fell into place Friday afternoon as the last 300 or so
rebels left Homs after an aid convoy was allowed into two pro-government
villages in northern Syria besieged by the opposition. The aid delivery
was part of the Homs agreement.
The withdrawal was a major
victory for the government in a conflict that has killed more than
150,000 people since March 2011. The deal handed Assad control of the
city once known as "the capital of the revolution," as well as a
geographic linchpin in central Syria from which to launch offensives on
rebel-held territory in the north.
Even before the last rebels
departed, government bulldozers were clearing paths through the heaviest
rubble in Homs’ battle-scarred districts Friday. It marked the first
time that government troops have entered these neighborhoods — the last
rebel bastions in the city — in more than a year.
Homs governor
Talal Barazi said engineering units were combing Hamidiyeh and other
parts of the old quarters in search of mines and other explosives. State
TV said two soldiers were killed while dismantling a bomb.
The
SANA state news agency reported that army troops discovered two field
hospitals in the neighborhoods of Bab Houd and Qarabis, as well as a
network of underground tunnels linking the districts to each other and
to the countryside.
An Associated Press reporter on a military-led
tour of Homs said soldiers and pro-government militiamen fanned out
across the districts to provide security. In Hamadiyeh, a predominantly
Christian neighborhood before the fighting caused residents to flee,
people trickled back in to check on their properties.
Imad Nanaa,
52, returned to examine his home for the first time in almost three
years. Miraculously, he found it almost intact, compared to other houses
with shattered windows and crumbling walls.
Speaking nervously
and hurriedly because he wanted to leave as quickly as possible, Nanaa
said he was looking forward to coming back with his family as soon as
the army allowed it.
"This deal has saved us from more blood and destruction," he said.
Later,
hundreds of men, women and children — some in strollers — walked
through parts of the eight-mile-long old quarters, flashing victory
signs and taking pictures. Some men in the first group dashed inside,
passing burned-out cars and heavily damaged buildings.
People
returning were required to hand over their IDs to the troops upon
entering the formerly rebel-held districts. The soldiers then returned
the papers as the people filed out later.
One man walked out with a guitar under his arm. A woman emerged from her home carrying a stack of photo
albums.
"I have nothing left for me to remember so I brought these photos," the woman, Fadia al-Ahmar,
said. "My house was destroyed."
The staggering scale of destruction in the area spoke to the ferocity of the fighting.
In
the Maljaa neighborhood, every building was damaged, even cars parked
inside. An eight-story building was flattened into rubble. Shop fronts
were pancaked. Walls of apartment blocks were blasted with holes from
artillery and tank shells.
Back in Hamadiyeh, the historic St.
Mary Church of the Holy Belt was heavily damaged, although the thick
stone walls were still standing. There were no pews and some of the
icons were disfigured. The Syriac Orthodox church’s damaged bell lolled
on the ground in the courtyard.
The Greek Orthodox bishop in Homs,
George Abu Zakhm, told the AP that the situation there is
"catastrophic." He said all 11 churches in Homs’ old quarter have been
either heavily damaged or destroyed.
He accused the rebels of
lighting a fire inside the 6th century Greek Orthodox St. Elian Church,
and said icons dating back hundreds of years "are still on the walls but
they were blackened."
Islamic extremists among Syria’s rebels
have desecrated churches elsewhere in Syria, but there was no immediate
evidence to suggest that opposition fighters were responsible for the
damage to Christian sites in central Homs, where every building bore the
scars of fighting.
___
Lucas reported from Beirut. Associated Press writers Bassem Mroue and Barbara Surk in Beirut contributed
to this report.
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