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One year later, Aleppo's residents still mourn destroyed city

Although the battle for Aleppo ended a year ago, some former residents can't bear to return to the destroyed city, while journalists fear arrest.
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“The moments we are living now in Aleppo could be the last moments of our lives,” Ameer al-Halabi wrote in a Messenger conversation last December to Al-Monitor. “Regime forces are a few meters from here: We could be killed or imprisoned once they enter, especially us … because we are journalists.”

A year after the “fall” of Aleppo, Al-Monitor wanted to reopen the conversations with all those journalists, media activists, photographers and citizens from Aleppo who had been the only ones to tell the world what was happening during the siege of eastern Aleppo and the last days before Syrian regime forces, supported by Russian airstrikes, retook the city from rebel forces’ control.

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