Assad forces unleash fury on Idlib with vow to crush last trace of Syrian rebellion
‘There will be no [evacuation on] green buses this time. They will be buried under the roofs of their houses’
REGIME forces have vowed to crush the Syrian rebellion once and for all in the province of Idlib, saying there will be “no green buses” like the ones that allowed rebel fighters to evacuate after previous defeats.
After eight months of relative quiet following a Russian-turkish ceasefire deal, regime forces and their allies have launched an air and ground assault on Idlib, the only province still in opposition hands.
Nearly 80 civilians, including 23 children, have been killed and 12 hospitals have been targeted by Russian and Syrian warplanes in 10 days, according to the White Helmets rescue group.
About three million civilians are trapped in Idlib, which is dominated by Hayat Tahrir al-sham, a jihadist faction linked to al-qaeda. Aid groups warn of mass casualties and vast refugee flows if President Bashir al-assad’s forces launch an all-out assault.
Regime troops and allied militias have so far focused their ground offensive on the southern edge of the province and this week captured the strategic town of Kafr Nabudah.
Fighters from a pro-regime unit posted a video of themselves celebrating amid the ruins of the town and warned that they would push into the rest of Idlib. “There will be no green buses this time,” one fighter said. “They will be buried under the roofs of their houses.”
Following several large battles in which rebel forces were defeated by the regime, opposition fighters and their families left on green buses to Idlib as part of a surrender deal.
However, Idlib is the last area under opposition control, so there is nowhere left to run. Both rebel and regime forces believe that the province will be the site of a final battle for Syria.
It is not yet clear if Assad’s forces are trying to seize complete control of the province or have more limited aims, such as recapturing two motorways that connect Aleppo, Syria’s largest city, to the Mediterranean.
Vladimir Putin, Russian president, who has strongly backed Assad, said last week he was not ruling out a fullscale attack but he considered it “inadvisable” for now. Moscow is also cautious about angering Turkey, which has troops in Idlib and is vehemently opposed to an attack.
So far, Russia and the Syrian regime have rained down airstrikes, targeting hospitals to break civilian morale.
Mustapha Hassan, a father-of-five, compared the aerial attack to the Russian assault on Grozny, capital of Chechnya, in 1995. “It is methodological destruction and expulsion because we demand freedom,” he said.
The UK has been urged to use its military radar systems in the Mediterranean to identify pilots doing the bombing. “The bare minimum we can do is to name and shame the aircraft attacking these hospitals,” said Hamish de Bretton-gordon, adviser to several medical groups in Idlib.