FIGHTING has long died down in Syria’s largest city but Aleppo’s centuries-old market still has to come back to life, more than a year after government forces retook rebel-held neighbourhoods around the Old City.

Few shops have reopened in the once sprawling bazaar in the historic quarter, with Unesco estimating as much as 60 per cent of the Old City was severely damaged and 30 per cent destroyed.

The bazaar, or souk, is believed to be one of the world’s oldest covered markets.

The market is part of Aleppo’s Old City, a Unesco World Heritage Site, which also boasts a 13th century citadel, the Great Mosque of Aleppo, also known as the Umayyad Mosque, and several other monuments, nearly all of which have been damaged or destroyed.

Meanwhile, activists and rescue teams have accused the Syrian Government of launching an attack with suspected poisonous gas that has affected nearly 20 civilians in a rebel-held suburb near the capital, Damascus.

The team of emergency workers known as White Helmets, or Syrian Civil Defence, says the attack hit a neighbourhood in the Douma district early yesterday.

It says the rescuers evacuated more than 20 civilians, most of them women and children from the area, which they say was hit with a suspected chlorine attack.