Civilians living in the ruins of Syria’s Raqqa have reported widespread devastation and a lack of support from authorities more than six months after Islamic State (IS) fighters were expelled from the city by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces.

In this video from pro-opposition media, an unnamed resident describes returning to the city shortly after it was recaptured from IS. The video shows scenes of widespread destruction, and piles of rubble in the streets.

“We can’t move. We can’t open our shops or work because of the destruction,” the man says, according to a translation from Baladi News. “No one came to check or even see. No one compensated us. Whatever we fixed was at our own expense.”

An April 1 UN mission reported that tens of thousands of people had returned to the city, but were “returning to nothing.” A report on the UN team’s visit described the destruction as exceeding “anything they had seen before” with “hardly a single building intact.”

The World Food Programme (WFP) on April 6 reported that some 100,000 people had returned to the city and that the WFP was providing food assistance for about 30,000 people. Credit: Baladi News via Storyful