Thousands of Syrians brace for winter in tents outside Raqqa

Ain Issa (Syria) - Families still reside in flimsy white tents, often with brightly coloured laundry slung out to dry on their guy ropes.

As dust whips up around them, families from Syria's Raqqa ready their tents for the coming winter, still homeless a year after the Daesh group was expelled from their city.
Tens of thousands fled their homes in and around Raqqa in the months that led up to US-backed forces ousting the militants from the northern city in October 2017.
One year on, most returned, but thousands of others from destroyed homes remain at a camp for the displaced in Ain Issa, around 50 kilometres north of the ravaged city.
Families still reside in flimsy white tents, often with brightly coloured laundry slung out to dry on their guy ropes.
"We have no means to rebuild our home. If we did, we wouldn't have stayed here," said Batul Sbaka, sitting inside a tent with two children on her lap.
The 32-year-old mother said she returned to see her home in Raqqa after she had heard the militants had been evicted. "When I saw my house, I screamed. We used to have two rooms and a kitchen. It was all destroyed," she said.
"At least here we have bread and water - and a tent for shelter," said Sbaka, a black scarf dotted with pink flowers wrapped around her face.
Around the tent where she lives, the camp's inhabitants have been preparing as best they can for the coming winter months and life under canvas. Armed with a shovel, a woman was digging a small trench around a tent in a bid to prevent expected rain water from trickling in.
A young man fixed the family tent back into position after it had been hit by a dust storm. Around 80 per cent of Raqqa city lies in ruins today, Amnesty International says, much of it due to air strikes by the US-led coalition. Outside another tent, Mashhur Al Maajun was sitting in a wheelchair, while his wife rested on a blanket on the ground. "We lost our home. We have nowhere to go," said the 73-year-old double amputee, dressed in a long grey robe.
"The camp is the only shelter we have," said the old man, who had also lost his vision because of diabetes. Her hair wrapped in a headscarf, his wife agreed.
"We don't want to live in this camp, but how are we supposed to live in our destroyed home?" she asked. Syria's civil war has killed more than 360,000 people and displaced millions since it started in 2011 with the brutal repression of anti-government protests.
Making up the daily routine of life at the Ain Issa camp, women examined vegetables on sale at stalls, while others lined up to fill up plastic jerry cans with water.

• MENA