BEIRUT (AP) – Syrian state TV says army experts are dismantling explosives and booby-traps left behind by rebels before they left the last neighborhoods they held in the northern city of Aleppo.
The TV’s correspondent in Aleppo says mining experts entered the neighborhoods of Ansari, Sukkari and Amiriyeh early Friday, beginning their work in main streets in order to open them.
The Syrian government took full control of Aleppo on Thursday for the first time in four years after the last opposition fighters and civilians were bused out of war-ravaged eastern districts, sealing the end of the rebellion’s most important stronghold.
The evacuations ended a brutal chapter in Syria’s nearly six-year civil war, allowing President Bashar Assad to regain full authority over the country’s largest city and former commercial hub.