War-weary Syrian families return to East Aleppo

Sajjad Malik, the UN's Acting Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Syria, who spoke to the press via teleconference late Wednesday, described the stark conditions that the residents are enduring just to return to their own homes, which were damaged from the Syrian civil war clashes and the Assad regime's airstrikes.

Malik said, “Roughly 2,200 Syrian families have returned to the once-opposition-held East Aleppo up until now."

“The weather is so cold under harsh winter conditions and people are returning to the freezing ruins without doors and windows, and even roofs" he added, stressing that the destruction of the city is beyond measure and the reconstruction will take a long time," he continued.

Following the armistice between the opposition and the regime, Aleppan children are playing on streets again, and the optimism and hopes for the future have become visible.

Malik thus stated that Syrian people were frustrated time after time, so the belligerents should give peace a chance to address those people's hopes.

The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) began to provide services to children who could not go to school for the last 5 years and need psychological support due to the war, he added.

Around 1.5 million people, including 400,000 internally displaced, are assumedly living in Aleppo where at least 4 million had resided prior to the devastating war.