Trump warns of ‘carnage’ in rebel stronghold in Syria as 200K refugees flee toward Turkey

President Donald Trump is speaking out against the “carnage” involving thousands of civilians in a rebel stronghold in Syria.

In a tweet Thursday, Mr. Trump wrote: “Russia, Syria, and Iran are killing, or on their way to killing, thousands of innocent civilians in Idlib Province. Don’t do it! Turkey is working hard to stop this carnage.”

The tweet refers to an intense air and ground bombardment by government forces in southern and eastern Idlib province, the last rebel-held bastion in the country.

Syrian government forces about a month ago launched a renewed effort to take the province, which is dominated by al-Qaida-linked militants and is also home to 3 million civilians. The United Nations has warned of the growing risk of a humanitarian catastrophe along the Turkish border.

A Syrian relief group said Wednesday that more than 200,000 men, women and children fled their homes in buses, trucks and cars in recent weeks. Many have been heading toward the Turkish border for safety.

Before a ground offensive began a week ago, the U.N. reported that some 60,000 Idlib residents had already been displaced since the government’s bombing campaign started late last month.

Videos posted online by activists and the opposition’s Syrian Civil Defense, also known as White Helmets, showed long lines of cars, trucks and buses heading

north. People carried their valuables and loaded bags and mattresses on buses.

Mr. Trump also addressed the plight of civilians in Idlib in June, accusing Russia, Syria and Iran of “indiscriminately killing many innocent civilians” in a bombing campaign. “The World is watching this butchery,” he tweeted then, imploring them to “STOP!” Several months later, he announced he would withdraw U.S. troops from northeastern Syria.

For days, the thumps of artillery in Idlib had been coming ever closer, the roar of warplanes more frequent — harbingers of a no-holdsbarred offensive launched by the Syrian government and its Russian allies, targeting the rebels’ last major bulwark against forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad. town of Sarmada, four miles from the sealed Turkish border. He crammed his family and what little they had been able to salvage into a friend’s two-room apartment and thought about the home he had left behind.

“A house is like a child. You nurture it ... and I built it stone by stone, block by block,” he said in a phone interview on Wednesday. “How do you want someone not to be sad about leaving his house and become a refugee?”

For months, the Syrian government and its Russian allies have pecked at Idlib, which Mr. Assad has vowed to take back from Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a rebel group affiliated with alQaida.

A cease-fire brokered in September by Russia and Iran, both of them allies of Mr. Assad, and Turkey, the rebels’ top patron, had temporarily stayed the offensive. But it fell apart amid accusations by the Syrian government that Turkey had failed to fulfill its obligations and filter out Hayat Tahrir al-Sham from among the opposition’s ranks.

Since Dec. 19, when the onslaught began anew, the rebels had begun a tortuous retreat, with the government’s advance into villages and towns spurring fresh waves of displaced people, many of them residents previously uprooted from other rebel-held territories since taken back by Mr. Assad, with the help of his Russian allies.