I took this video while on what often felt like a surreal bus ride through war-torn Syria. The video begins on the edge of the city of Aleppo, its western, government-held half. The area we drove through is all government held but has been intensely fought over, again and again, and has changed hands several times. The route we took connects the city to a key supply route — whoever controls the road determines if the eastern, rebel-held part of the city is besieged or not.

The destroyed buildings are in an area that was long held by rebels. The worst of the damage looks like the result of airstrikes. Only the government and, for the past year, its ally Russia have warplanes in the fight here. But some of the destruction could also be from artillery, which both sides have.

You go from this moonscape of war-destroyed buildings to a street of buses, open shops and apartments with laundry hanging from the balconies. These are areas that the government never lost, so they were never hit with the heaviest firepower. But rebel groups fire mortars; an individual strike doesn’t cause a building to fall, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t kill someone.