Torture rooms, booby traps and baby strollers in the streets of ISIS’s former capital Raqqa

The Syrian city of Raqqa was once the de facto capital of the ISIS’s self-styled caliphate, but U.S.-backed Syrian forces celebrated last month as they drove the extremists from the city.

CBC’s Adrienne Arsenault and Jean-François Bisson travelled to the devastated city shortly after its liberation and found the remnants of ISIS – from abandoned strollers to powerful narcotics to live explosives, all clues to the monstrous evil inflicted there.

ISIS declared Raqqa the capital of its envisaged caliphate, and for that reason it has been one of the most bombed-out places in the international fight against the group.

Not a single building along the main roads is still fully intact. The side roads and fields are inaccessible, as teams sweep for the land mines, bombs and booby traps that ISIS inevitably left behind.
It’s difficult to imagine how it could all be rebuilt. No one knows at this point who would pay for it – no one even knows who controls this city.

The psychological damage could also take time to heal, the nongovernmental organization said, explaining that children in camps told stories of witnessing executions and beheadings, and seeing friends and relatives killed by landmines and homes destroyed. It added that the tens of thousands of people who had fled the Raqqa fighting still need aid.

Source: CBC