BEIRUT: President Bashar Assad made a rare visit to the northern province of Aleppo on Friday to tour the country’s largest city and inaugurate a power station that was once held by insurgents and suffered wide damages during the war, state media reported.
The visit by Assad and his family to the city of Aleppo — Syria’s largest and once the nation’s commercial center — was his first since government forces captured its rebel-held eastern neighborhoods in December 2016 after a monthslong battle.
Photographs published by the president’s office show Assad, his wife, Asma and their two sons and a daughter walking through the historic covered market in Aleppo, one of the city’s landmarks that suffered wide destruction during the conflict. Parts of the market are now being renovated.
Assad also toured the centuries-old Ummayad Mosque, known known as The Great Mosque of Aleppo, where renovation work has been ongoing for years.
The capture of eastern Aleppo in 2016, after four years in rebels’ hands, was Assad’s biggest victory in the conflict at the time.
Before touring the city, Assad visited a power station in the eastern part of Aleppo province, according to his office and the state news agency, SANA.
Today, government-held parts of Syria endure more than 12 hours of power cuts a day as production is far less than the needs of the country. Syria’s infrastructure saw much destruction during the 11-year conflict.
SANA also said Assad inaugurated a part of the Aleppo power station that was renovated and is ready to produce up to 200 megawatts. The report said work was underway to also fix other parts of the station.
Friday’s inauguration comes on the sixth anniversary of Syrian troops retaking the station from militants, the report said.
Syrian government forces now control much of the country, thanks to allies Russia and Iran, which have helped tip the balance of power in Assad’s favor. The civil war that began in 2011 has killed hundreds of thousands of people, displaced half the country’s population and left large parts of Syria destroyed.
Syria’s Prime Minister Hussein Arnous recently told parliament that the country’s needs stand at about 7,000 megawatts but stations only produce a bit over 2,500 megawatts.
Arnous added that a main reason for electricity shortages is that Syria’s production of natural gas dropped sharply during the conflict as some of the country’s largest oil and gas fields are held by US-backed Syrian Kurdish-led fighters.
In November, Syria signed a contract with a group of companies from the United Arab Emirates to build a solar power station in a Damascus suburb. The station will produce 300 megawatts at peak rates.
A month earlier, Syria’s electricity ministry signed a $115 million contract with an Iranian company to rebuild another power station in central Syria.
Syria’s Assad tours once rebel-held Aleppo city, power plant
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Syria’s Assad tours once rebel-held Aleppo city, power plant
- Photographs published by the president's office show Assad and his family walking through the historic covered market in Aleppo
- Assad inaugurated a part of the Aleppo power station that was renovated
The UN says Al-Hol camp population has dropped sharply as Syria moves to relocate remaining families
The UN says Al-Hol camp population has dropped sharply as Syria moves to relocate remaining families
- Forces of Syria’s central government captured the Al-Hol camp on Jan. 21 during a weekslong offensive against the SDF, which had been running the camp near the border with Iraq for a decade
DAMASCUS: The UN refugee agency said Sunday that a large number of residents of a camp housing family members of suspected Daesh group militants have left and the Syrian government plans to relocate those who remain.
Gonzalo Vargas Llosa, UNHCR’s representative in Syria, said in a statement that the agency “has observed a significant decrease in the number of residents in Al-Hol camp in recent weeks.”
“Syrian authorities have informed UNHCR of their plan to relocate the remaining families to Akhtarin camp in Aleppo Governorate (province) and have requested UNHCR’s support to assist the population in the new camp, which we stand ready to provide,” he said.
He added that UNHCR “will continue to support the return and reintegration of Syrians who have departed Al-Hol, as well as those who remain.”
The statement did not say how residents had left the camp or how many remain. Many families are believed to have escaped either during the chaos when government forces captured the camp from the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces last month or afterward.
There was no immediate statement from the Syrian government and a government spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
At its peak after the defeat of IS in Syria in 2019, around 73,000 people were living at Al-Hol. Since then, the number has declined with some countries repatriating their citizens. The camp’s residents are mostly children and women, including many wives or widows of IS members.
The camp’s residents are not technically prisoners and most have not been accused of crimes, but they have been held in de facto detention at the heavily guarded facility.
Forces of Syria’s central government captured the Al-Hol camp on Jan. 21 during a weekslong offensive against the SDF, which had been running the camp near the border with Iraq for a decade. A ceasefire deal has since ended the fighting.
Separately, thousands of accused IS militants who were held in detention centers in northeastern Syria have been transferred to Iraq to stand trial under an agreement with the US
The US military said Friday that it had completed the transfer of more than 5,700 adult male IS suspects from detention facilities in Syria to Iraqi custody.
Iraq’s National Center for International Judicial Cooperation said a total of 5,704 suspects from 61 countries who were affiliated with IS — most of them Syrian and Iraqi — were transferred from prisons in Syria. They are now being interrogated in Iraq.
