Historic city of Aleppo is now rubble, after waves of bombing
"Nobody knows why the regime chooses this makeshift device – a crude container packed with up to half a ton of TNT and shrapnel – normally just unloaded from the back of helicopters. It may be it is running short of its Russian-made missiles, or that it wants to save them for military rather than easy civilian targets.
But the group calculates that 4,000 people have been killed, of which 2,600 have been identified. Others, like Mr Ali's neighbours, were simply incinerated. At one point in January, up to 30 barrels were dropping a day. The suburbs hit are a roll-call of the poorer, Sunni Muslim districts, previously a magnet for people from the countryside seeking work."