DAMASCUS, Jan 7, 2018 (Xinhua): A boy runs past a destroyed building in the war-ravaged city of Zabadani, northwestern countryside of Syria’s Damascus near the Lebanese border, on Jan. 6, 2018. A total of 1,500 families have returned to the city of Zabadani in the northwestern countryside of the capital Damascus near the Lebanese border, state news agency SANA reported on Saturday. The returning families are part of 10,000 others that had fled Zabadani when the battles there were raging before the Syrian army retook it and nearby areas in April 2017, after a deal was struck for the evacuation of the rebels toward northwestern Syria.
