Hope swept through Syria on Saturday as the first major cease-fire of the five-year civil war took hold in the ravaged country, giving residents their first taste of relative tranquility in years.
“Today we woke up and it was calm, stable,” said Loris Atwah, 65, a resident of Damascus. “Even in the street . . . it was complete calm.”
Children played in the parks in Aleppo, the northern city where a massive Russia-backed air offensive caused tens of thousands to flee in recent weeks.
The truce was drawn up by Secretary of State John Kerry and his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, in a rare instance of cooperation between the two countries.
It’s seen as a crucial step toward ending a conflict that has claimed 270,000 lives and displaced more than half the country’s population.