watch,
destruction over the past five years

Throughout the war, the Syrian government, allied with Russia and Iran, has been fighting various opposition groups, including the Free Syrian Army and Jabhat Fath al-Sham (formerly al-Qaeda affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra) for control over the city of Aleppo. The government retained much of the Western city of Aleppo, and besieged various parts of the rebel-held Eastern side. In early September, one of the first drone videos of Eastern Aleppo surfaced online. It shows a bulldozer clearing the space around a number of water puddles formed amidst the rubble. These puddles form when an explosion lands on a water pipe, and the pipe explodes leaving a large pool in the crater left behind. These pools have become the amusement parks of Syrian children in Eastern Aleppo. About a week later, the Syrian Ministry of Tourism released a promotional video featuring views of numerous sites of Western Aleppo. It was as if no war was going on.