Tears streaming down her freckled face, 35-year-old Asya took in the shattered glass, gutted storefronts and crumbling cafes - all that remain of her favourite shopping street in Syria's Raqqa.

"This was once the most beautiful city, my God," said the woman in a mustard-coloured headscarf, gesturing out of the back seat of a car moving slowly down Raqqa's once-bustling Tal Abyad boulevard.

"Now look around you. Look at our homes," she wailed.

Asya was one of the only civilians to access central Raqqa since the city was seized from the Daesh group this week by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces.

A handful of civilians - relatives of SDF fighters and displaced local officials - had been granted a one-day pass to access Raqqa for the ceremony and seized the chance to see what was left of their homes.

Asya's husband, an SDF fighter, took his wife and four children in their rented car after the ceremony and drove to find their home in Raqqa's Al Rumeilah district.

"I saw my house but wish I hadn't. It's been bombed - I only knew it from our personal items scattered outside," Asya said. "I would have rather had my things stolen but the walls still standing."

Asya and her family had considered moving back to their native Raqqa from the town of Tabqa, 70km west and also recaptured from Daesh earlier this year.

"But now I don't even want to come back to Raqqa, because all our beautiful memories have been turned into tragedies," Asya said, adding she had fond recollections of the now-ravaged street around her.

Some storefronts are still identifiable: a tattered sign outside a children's clinic, bare glass displays at a jewellery shop, and a tailor's fabric and sewing machines.

"Yes, we're happy to be back, but there's destruction, pain, and sadness," said lawyer and RCC member Fadila Hamad Al Khalil, who fled Daesh-ruled Raqqa in April, before the SDF broke into the city.

"I wasn't expecting the destruction to be this bad. It's unreal - there are no buildings left, no infrastructure, no signs of life whatsoever."

Khalil, too, was only able to catch a brief glimpse of her home from the outside before the SDF's ceremony to hand over governance of Raqqa to the RCC. She said she barely recognised her native city: "Everything is mashed together from the destruction."

Even those with a one-day pass could only see their homes from the outside, afraid of the explosives that could lie in wait inside.

Mahmud Mohammed, an engineer and member of the RCC's reconstruction committee, said the glimpse into Raqqa provided a rude wake-up call for rebuilding efforts.

But after seeing the devastation on Friday, they admitted they had been too optimistic.
"When we came into the city, the (reconstruction) plan changed completely," said Mohammed, 27, as he half-heartedly took pictures of the damaged Tal Abyad street on his cell phone.

"We would see pictures, but we didn't know and couldn't expect that we would see Raqqa like this."

Mohammed pointed out a row of damaged storefronts and said his family had once owned them all, operating a relief centre and a lingerie shop even under Daesh.

Source: Khaleej Times