RT footage from a drone flying over a Damascus neighborhood shows the scale of destruction inflicted upon it by years of warfare. The once-thriving area has been turned into a desolate, gray concrete wasteland.

The video was shot in the Dukhania neighborhood in eastern Damascus, which has changed hands several times during the civil war and at one point served as a staging ground for terror group the Al Nusra Front planning attacks on downtown in the capital.

READ MORE: Turkey blockades Syrian Kurdish areas surrounded by ISIS (RT EXCLUSIVE)

An increasing number of groups of people fighting against the Syrian government are realizing that radical Islamists pose a greater threat to the country. RT correspondent Murad Gazdiev spoke to one of them, Colonel Talal Silo, a spokesman for the Syrian Democratic Forces, who said the Islamists had hijacked the revolution.

The SDF is an alliance of Kurds, Christians and Arabs fighting against the terrorists of Islamic State in the northwest Syria. Last year, they scored a number of major victories in Al-Hasakah province.