As a tenuous peace holds in the Syrian city of Homs , many of its residents are returning home for the first time in years to see what war spared them . The neighborhood known as Old Town on Monday looked entirely dusty and gray . Many of its buildings , many thousands of years old , are heaps of rubble after non-stop of shelling . Hassan Deshash sweated in the midday sun , cleaning up his trashed shoe store . He came back to Homs to take inventory , he told CNN 's Frederik Pleitgen , who met him there . Deshash escaped Homs two years ago and has been living in Damascus , where he managed to open another shoe store . Remembering the time he was forced from his home , he simply said , `` It was awful . '' Less than a mile from where Deshash picked up rebar and threw it into a pile , some parts of Homs look untouched by war . Sports stores are open , selling Adidas and Nike . Lines are moving briskly in clean and stocked grocery stores . People pass time at busy cafes . But that 's the reality of the place -- some parts were hit , others were not . Homs was , though , the center of the first large demonstrations against President Bashar al-Assad in 2011 . Now it is one of the areas of the country where stability may hold . Rebels withdrew from Homs last week . A truce was declared after rebels agreed to a prisoner release involving 70 Lebanese Hezbollah fighters , 20 Iranian officers captured by the Islamic Front in Aleppo and a female Iranian agent who was captured at the end of March . Hezbollah and Iran have backed al-Assad 's government in the war . In Old Town , it would be understandable if Syrians felt bitter , angry or pessimistic . There is no water or electricity in many areas . Attempts at peace coordinated by international diplomats have fallen through in the past . Nearly everyone has a story of loss . At least 2,500 people were trapped in Homs , and it was incredibly difficult to deliver humanitarian aid to the city . The war has taken , by most estimates , at least 100,000 lives and has displaced millions . As if the situation could get any more brutal , looters showed up in Old Town to swipe whatever was left in the ruins , Syrians told Pleitgen . And yet many Syrians seemed optimistic . Most were friendly , though some politely told the correspondent they did n't want to talk on camera . They explained that they just wanted to focus on seeing what possessions they could reclaim . Some heaved mattresses and refrigerators and shoved them onto truck beds . They thought the truce would stick . Travel was once a life-risking endeavor in Homs . But on Monday drivers rolled through checkpoints staffed by Syrian government soldiers . Even they were unusually friendly , telling Pleitgen they thought that Western media has misrepresented them as the bad guys in the civil war . One soldier told Pleitgen that he supports the truce between the rebels and the government . `` I think this was the best thing , '' said the soldier who did not give his name . `` It gives the people the chance to come back and start rebuilding their lives . '' Syria war fast facts - revisit the history of the conflict . The roots of the war in Syria began in March 2011 after a group of teenagers and children were arrested for writing political graffiti that disparaged al-Assad , who has controlled the country since July 2000 . His father , Hafez al-Assad , ruled Syria from 1970 to 2000 . When protests stirred over the arrests , the Syrian government violently cracked down , and violence followed , metastasizing throughout the country . Over time the civil war grew more complicated and involved various fighters , some of whom were Syrian , some of whom were from other countries . By March 2012 , after one year of fighting , the United Nations reported that more than 8,000 people had died . Activists fighting to oust al-Assad from office estimated the death toll to be much higher with more than 10,000 dead . Most of them were civilians , activists contended . By February 2013 , the U.N. Security Council estimated that the number of civilians killed in the two-year civil war was approaching 70,000 . In a January 2014 report , Human Rights Watch slammed international powers for failing to stop `` the unchecked slaughter of civilians in Syria . '' The bloodshed , Human Rights Watch said , `` elicited global horror and outrage but not enough to convince world leaders to exert the pressure needed to stop it . ''
A truce was declared between rebels and the Syrian government . Homs residents who escaped the fighting returned to their homes . Some neighborhoods were untouched ; stores , cafes operate as if there was no war .