Syrian who fled as a teen heads home on a mission to rebuild

After eight years in exile, Mr Ibrahim Abdullah is finally going home, his belongings stuffed into the same simple sports bag he carried when he fled Syria eight years ago.

Just 13 at the time, he sneaked through the barbed wire along Syria's northern frontier to seek safety in neighboring Turkey.

With the downfall of President Bashar al-Assad, Mr Abdullah is among thousands of Syrians going back. Bag in hand, he aims to find his childhood home in Aleppo, just days after an Islamist-led rebel offensive took the city and forced Mr Assad to flee.

"There's nothing valuable in it, just a few clothes," he told AFP, pointing to his bag while waiting at the Oncupinar border crossing near the Turkish city of Gaziantep.

Dressed in a blue-and-white checked shirt over a black hoodie, he arrived on a night bus from Istanbul which is home to around 500,000 of the three million Syrian refugees in Turkey.