Syrian and Russian forces battled to bring Syria's second city of Aleppo under Assad's full control for years, unleashing widespread devastation.
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00:00Following the sudden fall of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, residents of Aleppo
00:06have been reflecting on the horrors inflicted on them and their city under al-Assad's control.
00:13A brutal dictatorship, al-Assad's regime unleashed widespread devastation and destruction across
00:19Syria's second city.
00:22Hundreds of thousands were killed in indiscriminate bombings, while the country's economic meltdown
00:28plunged most of its population into poverty and drug trafficking ran rampant.
00:34Eighty-four-year-old Dr. Obeid Diab was forced to flee from his home as his city was bombed.
00:39I swear to God, he hit me. He was flying a plane and I hit him. The wind took him here.
00:44They brought him here. I don't know. They hit him and that's it.
00:54Many people Dr. Diab knew were killed in these attacks, including his nine-year-old niece
00:59who he buried, alongside many other neighborhood children, with his bare hands.
01:06Countless people also disappeared into the regime's brutal prison system.
01:12Aleppo resident Ali said he was arrested and jailed over unfounded accusations.
01:18We were here since 2011. We were here in 2016, in Al-Asr and Al-Hassan.
01:25We were here and the criminal Assad's army attacked us.
01:30They took us to prison. We are armed gangs.
01:35While the future is still unclear, for many Syrians the fall of al-Assad has brought hope for the first time.