JANE FERGUSON:

Outside a Turkish hospital by the border with Syria, the wounded gather.

Two months ago, she says that she was hit with an airstrike, so she has only just now managed to get out to Turkey for treatment. They came here after fleeing Aleppo city, the last major bastion of revolution and revolt against Bashar al-Assad's rule in Syria.

Government forces defeated the city's remaining pockets of resistance last Friday, after a siege and aerial bombing campaign by Russian and Syrian warplanes; 35,000 people, including the remaining fighters and civilians, were evacuated in the last two weeks, after tense negotiations.

They joined hundreds of thousands already displaced to other rebel-controlled areas outside the city. A convoy of buses leaving the shattered city became a symbol of the rebels' defeat. It was a somber exodus of people who once came close to overthrowing President Bashar al-Assad.

One of those who held out to the end was Salah Ashkar, an activist from Aleppo. He spent the final days of the bombardment documenting it on social media, and begging the outside world for help. He fled to Turkey just days ago, still haunted by what he saw in Aleppo.

SALAH ASHKAR, Activist from Aleppo (through translator): Death was following us during the last days we spent in Aleppo. The amount of airstrikes we had there, I don't think has been seen anywhere in the world, or the types of bombs they dropped on us. The Russian airplanes were constantly in the air, never leaving.