"You can't say "the people of Aleppo" because the majority of the people of Aleppo are living in the area under the control of the government, so you cannot talk about the people of Aleppo."

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You have to look at the reality in Syria. Whenever we liberate any city or village from the terrorists, the civilians will go back to the city, while they flee that city when the terrorists attack that area, the opposite. So, they flee, first of all, the war itself; they flee the area under the control of the terrorists, they flee the difficult situation because of the embargo by the West on Syria.

— Bashar al-Assad