Syria crisis worsens as nearly one million people were displaced in the first four months of this year
More than 900,000 people were displaced inside Syria in the first four months of this year, the highest in the seven-year conflict, the UN said yesterday.
The global body’s chief also called for an investigation of air strikes in Idlib province, believed to have been carried out by Russian jets, which killed dozens of people including children.
Meanwhile, Syrian regime forces yesterday ousted ISIS from Albu Kamal, the eastern town near the border, and stopped a rebel advance on the ancient city of Palmyra as the civil war continues to rage on.
“We are seeing a massive displacement inside Syria,” Panos Moumtzis, the UN regional humanitarian co-ordinator for Syria, said in Geneva. “From January to April, there were over 920,000 newly displaced people.
“This was the highest displacement in that short period of time we have seen since the conflict started.”
Mr Moumtzis said that air strikes in Idlib three days earlier, which killed more than 40 people in the north-western village of Zardana, meant “we may have not seen the worst of the crisis”.
He said escalation in Idlib could make the situation “much more complicated and brutal”.
The north-west province, bordering Turkey, has become a “dumping ground” for civilians and fighters moved from other opposition-controlled areas, swelling its population, Mr Moumtzis said.
The strikes have heightened fears that millions more could be internally displaced if military action in rebel-held Idlib continues.
“What these figures clearly show is that the conflict is nowhere near winding down. If anything they indicate that the conflict has escalated,” Dr Lina Khatib, head of the Mena Programme at Chatham House, told The National.
“I think that as Assad continues to tighten his grip on areas previously held by rebels, we are going to see more internal displacement in Syria and that’s because his strategy is emptying them from their original residences as much as possible.
“The fewer people that remain, the easier those areas are to control.”
Displacement in the first four months of the year was largely propelled by the Syrian regime’s assault on rebel-held Ghouta, the suburb of Damascus in which 350,000 people lived before its capture in April.
Tougher measures by Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon, the neighbouring states who have borne the brunt of Syria’s mass migration, has resulted in more people unable to flee outside of Syria’s borders and forced to move internally.
Arab-Kurdish ground offensives, supported by the US-led coalition, and Syrian regime drives to retake parts of eastern Syria from ISIS have also played their part.
Syrian regime operations continued yesterday in Albu Kamal after days of clashes that followed a deadly incursion by the militant group.
On Friday, the militants used at least 10 suicide bombers in their offensive on the Syrian border town, quickly overrunning several neighbourhoods.
It was the biggest attack on the town in the eastern province of Deir Ezzor since the group lost it to regime forces in November last year.