Widespread damage in Aleppo’s Sheikh Maqsoud as residents prepare to return

Описание: (12 Jan 2026)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:

ASSOCIATED PRESS
Aleppo, Syria - 11 January 2026
1. Wide of the entrance to the Sheikh Maqsoud neighbourhood with security vehicles and ambulances entering
2. Burned cars
3. Wide of residents walking
4. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Yildiz Hatoun, resident of Sheikh Maqsoud: ++SOUNDBITE STARTS ON SHOT1 AND IS OVERLAID BY SHOT 2-3&5++
“We wanted to leave because there was shelling. On the second day, when we tried to leave, we were not allowed to pass a Kurdish checkpoint. So we came back here and we almost died. Nothing is left for us. The whole building was shaking while we were inside.”
5. Damaged mosque
6. Various of damaged cars and people in the street
7. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Ahmad Shaikho, resident of Sheikh Maqsoud: ++SOUNDBITE STARTS ON PREVIOUS SHOT AND IS OVERLAID BY SHOT8-9++
“The situation now, thank God, is calm. There is no gunfire. Only remnants of the war remain, shell fragments here, an unexploded shell there, ammunition magazines in some places and bullets scattered across the land here and there.”
8. Wide of unexploded mortar shell on the street
9. Mid of burnt machine guns stacked in the back of a burnt car
10. Wide exterior of damaged hospital
STORYLINE:
People have started returning Sunday to a contested neighborhood in Syria’s northern city of Aleppo after days of intense clashes between government forces and Kurdish-led forces.

Ambulances and first responders were entering the neighborhood to tend to residents, clear the rubble, and disarm mines.

Clashes broke out Tuesday in the predominantly Kurdish northern neighborhoods of Sheikh Maqsoud, Achrafieh and Bani Zaid, after the government and the Syrian Democratic Forces, the main Kurdish-led force in the country, failed to make progress on how to merge their forces into the national army.

Security forces have since captured Achrafieh and Bani Zaid.

The fighting between the two sides is the most intense since the fall of then-President Bashar Assad in December 2024.

At least 22 people were killed in five days of clashes and more than 140,000 were displaced. Intense shelling and drone strikes were common in the deadly fighting.

Kurdish fighters had evacuated from the Aleppo neighborhood of Sheikh Maqsoud to northeastern Syria, under the control of the Syrian Democratic Forces.

However, a statement from the group’s Internal Security Forces earlier said that they will continue to fight now that the wounded and civilians were evacuated in what they called a “partial ceasefire.”

“From now on, our forces will continue, without hesitation and until the end, to follow in the footsteps of their martyrs in defense of the free will and dignity of our people,” the statement read, though the situation remains calm.

Government security forces brought journalists to tour the devastated neighborhood, showing them the Khalid al-Fajer Hospital which was damaged in the fighting and a military position belonging to the SDF's security forces that government forces targeted.

The SDF statement accused the government of targeting the hospital “dozens of times” before patients were evacuated.

Damascus accused the Kurdish-led group of using the hospital and other civilian facilities as military positions.

Ambulances visited residents to tend to the wounded and those who needed medical care trapped in the fighting.

On one street, Syrian Red Crescent first responders spoke to a resident surrounded by charred cars and badly damaged residential buildings.



“The situation now, thank God, is calm. There is no gunfire," he added.






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