Earthquake stuns Syria’s Aleppo even after war’s horrors

By BASSEM MROUE and KAREEM CHEHAYEB
Associated Press

BEIRUT (AP) — For years, the people of Aleppo bore the brunt of bombardment and fighting when their city, once Syria’s largest and most cosmopolitan, was among the civil war’s fiercest battle zones. Even that didn’t prepare them for the devastation and terror wreaked by this week’s earthquake. The natural disaster piled further suffering on Aleppo and Syria more broadly. Many also say that the earthquake has been more terrible than the war in its destruction and aftermath. In the words of Wissam Zarqa, an opposition supporter: “The destruction of natural disasters is all pain and nothing else but pain.”