Syria's Assad makes first visit to Aleppo since recapture

Nearly half a million people have been killed during the civil war in Syria which broke out in 2011 after Assad's brutal crackdown on anti-government protesters

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad marked the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha on Saturday in Aleppo, his first visit to the northern city since his forces recaptured it in 2016 with help from Russia and other allied forces.

A statement by Syrian state news agency SANA said Assad performed Eid al-Adha prayers at the Ibn Abbas mosque alongside other top government officials.

Bashar Al-Assad’ schizophrenia: asking refugees to come back to Syria but at the same time keeps planning chemical attacks – Cartoon [Mohammad Sabaaneh/Middle East Monitor]

In his remarks, Assad said he visited historic marketplaces and inaugurated a thermal power plant that is expected to generate 200 megawatts of electricity, according to SANA.

The city produced 1,000 megawatts of power before the fighting erupted there in 2012, one year into the uprising against Assad.

His forces recaptured the city in late 2016 with help from Russian warplanes and Iran-backed armed groups. Tehran then signed a deal to rehabilitate five power plants in Aleppo.

Much of the city’s infrastructure had been left in ruins by the fighting, which also ravaged the Old City – a UNESCO World Heritage site.

READ: Turkey, Syria regime deploy military to Aleppo

Unless otherwise stated in the article above, this work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. If the image(s) bear our credit, this license also applies to them. What does that mean? For other permissions, please contact us.