Jan 25, 2017

Hundreds of Syrians rode a train across east Aleppo for the first time in more than four years on Thursday, a month after the army retook the whole city, a photographer working with AFP said.

Men, women and children peered out the windows as they rode across devastated eastern districts after regime forces recaptured them from rebels in December, the photographer said.

It was the train's first such trip since rebels overran east Aleppo in the summer of 2012, effectively dividing the northern city into a regime-held west and a rebel-controlled east.

A driver in a leather jacket ferried the full carriages from Jibreen station on the city's eastern outskirts across the city's former front line to Aleppo's main Baghdad railway station.

As they slowly moved through the rubble of the city's scarred east, the passengers -- surprised at the extent of the damage -- pulled out their mobile phones to take pictures.