No end in sight as Syria’s brutal war enters 10th year
BEIRUT: Syria’s brutal conflict entered its 10th year Sunday with President Bashar al-assad’s regime consolidating its hold over a war-wracked country with a decimated economy where foreign powers flex their muscle.
When Syrians took to the streets on March 15, 2011, they could scarcely have imagined their anti-government protests would turn into a complex war entangling rebels, jihadists and outside forces.
At least 384,000 people have since died, including more than 116,000 civilians, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor said Saturday.
The conflict has displaced more than 11 million people internally and abroad.
“Nine years of revolution illustrate the extent of the suffering we have known, between exile, bombings and deaths,” said Hala Ibrahim, a rights activist who now lives in the town of Dana, in Idlib province.
“I left my university, my house which was bombed,” the woman in her 30s said. “We’ve lost everything.”
Originally from the northern city of Aleppo, Ibrahim left in late 2016 after the regime retook rebel-held areas and she sought refuge in Idlib.
The northwestern region -Syria’s last rebel stronghold -- is the regime’s latest target.
Thanks to the military support of Russia, Iran and Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, Assad has clawed back control of over 70% of the war-torn country.
A fragile ceasefire came into effect in the northwest earlier this month, and Turkish and Russian officials have agreed to start joint patrols in Idlib.
Syrian forces and Russian warplanes have heavily bombarded the region since December, killing nearly 500 civilians, the Observatory says, and forcing nearly a million to flee, according to the United Nations.
Siham Abs and seven of her children have been living for the past two months in a camp for Idlib’s displaced near Bardaqli, not far from the Turkish border.
RUSSIA AND TURKEY CUT SHORT JOINT PATROL Russia and Turkey were forced to cut short their first joint patrol along the M4 highway linking Syria’s east and west on Sunday due to rebel provocations, the Russian Defence Ministry was cited as saying by Russian news agencies.
The patrol was the result of a recent agreement between Moscow and Ankara on a ceasefire in Syria’s Idlib province.
“Terrorists were trying to use civilians as a human shield,” the Russian defence Ministry said.