Regime hits civilian sites as need outstrips aid response
Syrian government forces bombed civilian targets in northwestern Idlib province yesterday, pushing ahead with a fierce military campaign that has sent nearly a million people fleeing from their homes and killed hundreds over the past three months.
Backed by Russian air power, Syrian President Bashar alAssad’s forces have over the past few days captured dozens of villages, including major rebel strongholds in the last oppositionheld area.
United Nations spokesman Stephane Dujarric said the situation was increasingly dire following a spike in hostilities in the last 48 hours. Air strikes were reported in 19 communities and shelling in 10 villages in Idlib and Hama, with at least 21 civilians, including five women and nine children, reportedly killed.
The strikes also damaged educational and medical facilities, including Idlib Central Hospital, and several facilities that were serving as shelters for displaced people, Dujarric said.
Dujarric said the UN was trying to expand cross-border aid deliveries to accommodate up to 100 trucks per day, but that needs ‘‘continue to outstrip the humanitarian community’s capacity to respond’’.
More than 300 civilians have been killed since the beginning of December, when government troops launched a new military campaign to recapture Idlib, the last significant opposition-controlled region in the country.
According to the UN, 948,000 people have been displaced, fleeing their homes towards safer areas near the border with Turkey.
The fighting has triggered a humanitarian disaster, overwhelming already crowded refugee camps amid shortages in food and medicine.
As in previous campaigns to recapture opposition-held areas, government forces were bombing hospitals, medical centres, schools and other civilian infrastructure in a bid to subdue the local population, opposition activists and aid organisations said.
The Syrian Response Coordination Group, a relief group operating in the country’s northwest, said government forces had struck numerous civilian targets in the past 24 hours, including eight schools, three medical centres, and several settlements where people displaced by the fighting had taken shelter.
At UN headquarters in New York, ambassadors from nine of the 15 UN Security Council nations requested a meeting with Secretary-general Antonio Guterres to press for increased UN action on the escalating Idlib crisis. Syria’s closest ally, Russia, was among the council nations that didn’t attend.
The violence came as a Russian delegation was scheduled to arrive in Turkey to resume talks aimed at easing tensions in Idlib. Turkey and Russia back rival groups in the Syrian conflict, and in recent weeks Ankara has sent thousands of troops to Idlib. Clashes between Turkish and Syrian troops have left 16 Turkish soldiers dead. – AP