The wreckage of the Syrian city of Homs became the bittersweet backdrop for a young couple’s wedding pictures.

Nada Merhi, 18, wore a traditional white gown when she married camouflage-clad Hassan Youssef, 27, on Friday. Youssef is a soldier in Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s army, which took Homs from rebels in November.

The wedding took place as Assad’s forces closed in on another rebel stronghold to the north, Aleppo, Syria’s second-largest city. The advancing government armies and intense Russian airstrikes sent a new flood of Syrian refugees — as many as 70,000 — rushing to the Turkish border.

With Post wire services