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Comment by pcardh0 | Hacker News Reader

Thank God this is in the newspaper. Now Barack Obama will know about it. Maybe he can make a speech and end the war. I think there is a prize for that.

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Not just any newspaper, the Washington Post!

> My wife and I are among about 250,000 people trapped here in the besieged eastern section of the city.

Stopped reading right there.

Why?

Because after four years of war the number of people in Eastern Aleppo isn't even close to the pre-war population. The media says, 250,000 to 300,000. Probably more like a tenth that currently.

Meanwhile there is 1 to 1.4 million people in Western Aleppo.

Thanks for the reply. Were there 250-300K people living there before the war, or was this an estimate at some earlier point in the war?

I do not know. And I have no real first person information on Syria except for one friend who is half Syrian who has some family in Homs[1]. However I'm dubious about the 300,000 number since it just seems to be reflexively repeated for years. And because sounds like the number of people escaping Eastern Aleppo is a small trickle. Despite that it's barely a functioning city at this point.

Also there is this.

> While aid groups estimate anywhere from 175,000 to 300,000 people still live in eastern rebel-held Aleppo, it is difficult to gauge the accuracy of figures from rebel territory. For example, Darayya, another besieged rebel-held city, was said to have more than 8,000 occupants. But last week, when government forces evacuated the entire town, they found fewer than 2,000 people still residing there.

http://www.latimes.com/world/middleeast/la-fg-syria-aleppo-m...

[1] And she of course knows little

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