Syria military

the around 6.5 million people already internally displaced by Syria’s sevenyear-old conflict.

After fleeing her home many times since the start of war, 30-year-old widow Um Muhammad has once again been forced to move with her three children, and is now sheltering in a school deeper inside rebel territory in southwest Syria.

“Each of us took only our clothes. Right now there’s bombardment everywhere,” she told Reuters.

In Moscow, Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov was quoted by RIA news agency as saying Russian officials hoped to discuss southwest Syria with US National Security Adviser John Bolton soon, and separately with Jordan.

Jordan’s foreign minister said his country, already hosting hundreds of thousands of refugees, could not take in Syrians fleeing fighting in the southwest.

“We demand that the de-escalation agreement ... be respected,” Ayman Safadi said on Twitter on Sunday.

Assad has turned to the southwest after driving rebels from their last besieged enclaves in western Syria, including eastern Ghouta near Damascus, earlier this year.

It is one of two major areas still held by rebel factions, along with Idlib province on the border with Turkey in the northwest. Deraa, the southwest’s largest city, was an early centre of the uprising against Assad in 2011 and has been split into rebel and government sectors for years.