BEIRUT: Some 8,000 people have been displaced in the past 24 hours by multiple airstrikes by Syrian government forces and allied Russia in the north-western rebel enclave of Idlib, a war monitor reported on Wednesday.
“The intensity of the random bombardment in the area, mainly in the southern countryside of Idlib, and the resulting massive destruction have prompted many families to leave their houses and head to camps near the Syrian-Turkish border,” Rami Abdel-Rahman, the head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said.
On April 30, the Syrian government, supported by Russian air power, began a large-scale offensive against rebels in the provinces of Hama and Idlib, forcing thousands of people to flee.
The Syrian forces have since regained territory from the rebels in the two neighbouring provinces.
David Swanson, the spokesman of United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Jordan, could not confirm the latest numbers of those displaced by the ongoing bout of violence in Idlib.
“The situation on the ground remains fluid,” he said. “While we don’t have confirmation on the actual numbers, there is renewed displacement from southern Idlib northward and it’s significant,” he added. At least 30 civilians, mainly children, have been killed since Monday by Syrian and Russian airstrikes in rural Idlib, according to Abdel-Rahman.
Idlib is the last rebel stronghold in Syria.
REFUGEE CRISIS
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said world powers had not yet offered any support for his planned “safe zone” in northern Syria, where he intends to resettle a million Syrian refugees, broadcaster NTV reported on Wednesday.
Turkey has said the zone will let refugees camped out in its territory return safely to their own country, and help secure its border with Syria. But Western allies have criticised the Turkish military incursion in October which saw Ankara seize a large part of Syria’s north from Kurdish YPG militia.
“Not even the countries we regard as the most powerful and respected have come out yet in response to our call on the safe zone and said ‘we’re in’,” Erdogan was quoted as telling reporters in Geneva, where he attended the Global Forum on Refugees on Tuesday.
More than 600,000 refugees would voluntarily join around 371,000 already in the “peace zone”, he said.
“If we succeed in this, it will go down in history as an example. They will say, ‘Turkey established this city or cities for refugees’. This is really important for us. Our project is great,” he said.
Erdogan said Turkey had spent $40 billion hosting some 3.7 million Syrian refugees. He has repeatedly accused the European Union of failing to deliver about half the nearly 6 billion euros ($6.61 billion) it had promised to support the broader refugee work.
Turkey and its Syrian rebel allies launched its third offensive in northern Syria in October, targeting the US-allied YPG militia, which had spearheaded the fight against IS.
— Reuters
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