{"id":18836,"date":"2018-10-17T11:24:52","date_gmt":"2018-10-17T11:24:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=18836"},"modified":"2018-10-17T11:24:52","modified_gmt":"2018-10-17T11:24:52","slug":"israel-closes-both-border-crossings-with-gaza","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=18836","title":{"rendered":"Israel closes both border crossings with Gaza"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\nRaqqa, Syria: All day, dinghies cross the Euphrates River to shuttle residents into the pulverised cityscape of Syria\u2019s Raqqa, where bridges, homes, and schools remain gutted by the offensive against Daesh.
Exactly a year has passed since a blistering US-backed assault ousted the extremists from their one-time Syrian stronghold, but Raqqa \u2014 along with the roads and bridges leading to it \u2014 remains in ruins.
To enter the city, 33-year-old Abu Yazan and his family have to pile into a small boat on the southern banks of the Euphrates, which flows along the bottom edges of Raqqa.
They load their motorcycle onto the small vessel, which bobs precariously north for a few minutes before dropping off passengers and their vehicles at the city\u2019s outskirts.
\u201cIt\u2019s hard \u2014 the kids are always afraid of the constant possibility of drowning,\u201d says bearded Abu Yazan.
\u201cWe want the bridge to be repaired because it\u2019s safer than water transport.\u201d
The remains of Raqqa\u2019s well-known \u201cOld Bridge\u201d stand nearby: a pair of massive pillars, the top of the structure shorn off.
It was smashed in an air strike by the US-led coalition, which bombed every one of Raqqa\u2019s bridges to cut off the extemists\u2019 escape routes.
The fighting ended on October 17 last year, when the city finally fell to the Syrian Democratic Forces, which then handed it over to the Raqqa Civil Council (RCC) to govern.
But 60 bridges are still destroyed in and around the city, says RCC member Ahmad Al-Khodr.
\u201cThe coalition has offered us eight metal bridges,\u201d he says, to link vital areas in Raqqa\u2019s countryside.
Rights group Amnesty International estimates around 80 percent of Raqqa was devastated by fighting, including vital infrastructure like schools and hospitals.
The national hospital, the city\u2019s largest medical facility, was where Daesh made its final stand. It still lies ravaged.
Private homes were not spared either: 30,000 houses were fully destroyed and another 25,000 heavily damaged, says Amnesty.
Ismail Al-Muidi lost his son, an SDF fighter, and his home.
\u201cI buried him myself with these two hands,\u201d says Muidi, 48.
\u201cI was not as affected when I lost the house, but I had hoped it would shelter me and my family,\u201d he adds.
Now homeless, he lives with his sister in the central Al-Nahda neighborhood.
\u201cThe coalition destroyed the whole building, and all our belongings went with them,\u201d he says.
Anxiety over eking out a living has put streaks of grey into Muidi\u2019s hair and beard.
\u201cHow could I rebuild this house? We need help to remove the rubble, but no one has helped us at all,\u201d he says.
Since Daesh was ousted, more than 150,000 people have returned to Raqqa, according to United Nations estimates last month.
But the city remains haunted by one of Daesh\u2019s most infamous legacies: a sea of mines and unexploded ordnance that still maims and kills residents to this day.
The RCC says it does not have enough money to clear out the rubble still clogging up Raqqa\u2019s streets, much less rehabilitate its water and electricity networks.
Khodr unfurls a map of the city in front of him at his office in the RCC, pointing out the most ravaged neighborhoods.
\u201cThe districts in the center of the city were more damaged \u2014 90 percent destroyed \u2014 compared to a range of 40 to 60 percent destroyed in the surrounding areas,\u201d he tells AFP.
\u201cThe destruction is massive and the support isn\u2019t cutting it.\u201d
A plastic bucket in hand, Abd Al-Ibrahim sits despondently on a curbside in the Al-Ferdaws neighborhood.
Fighting destroyed his home, so he now squats in another house but there has been no water there for three days.
\u201cI come sit here, hoping somebody will drive by to give me water. But no one comes,\u201d the 70-year-old says, tearing up.
He points to a mound of rubble nearby.
\u201cMy house is like this now. We were in paradise. Look at what happened to us \u2014 we\u2019re literally begging for water.\u201d
The coalition has helped de-mine, remove rubble, and rehabilitate schools in Raqqa, but efforts have been modest and piecemeal compared to the scale of the destruction.
\u201cYou can\u2019t call this reconstruction \u2014 it\u2019s all empty talk,\u201d says Samer Farwati, who peddles cigarettes across from his destroyed house in the Masaken Al-Tobb district.
He pays $120 to rent a home since his was hit in an air strike.
Farwati says he no longer trusts officials after too many empty promises.
\u201cIf they helped us even a little bit, we could complete the construction. But there\u2019s no hope at all,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Raqqa, Syria: All day, dinghies cross the Euphrates River to shuttle residents into the pulverised cityscape of Syria\u2019s Raqqa, where bridges, homes, and schools remain gutted by the offensive against Daesh.Exactly a year has passed since a blistering US-backed assault ousted the extremists from their one-time Syrian stronghold, but Raqqa \u2014 along with the roads…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":18837,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18836","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18836","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18836"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18836\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/18837"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}