As the uprising to oust Syrian President Bashar al Assad moves into its third year, the citizens of Aleppo remain unsure of when or how the fighting will end. The city—a former commercial center—hosts skirmishes between the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and Assad’s troops on an almost daily basis.
Front lines can shift without warning, and the state of the city’s crumbling infrastructure only worsens. Aleppo is, quite literally, a shell of a city: Whole stretches of homes and storefronts are now reduced to rubble. Residents face a collapsed economy and a desperate lack of water, electricity, and food.
A sense of desolation hovers over the empty streets. For those who still call this post-apocalyptic urban landscape home, death has become a way of life.
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Civilians stand atop a pile of rubble.
A FSA fighter climbs on a destroyed building in Aleppo's Bustan al-Basha, once a residential neighborhood, now an abandoned and highly contested area.
The view of an abandoned section of Aleppo from the back of a rebel truck.
An airstrike survivor walks away from his destroyed home.
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Sebastiano Tomada Piccolini is a war photographer covering conflict in the Middle East and Asia. You can follow him on Twitter @SebastianoTP