Syrian army hits civilian targets
UN looks to expand cross-border aid amid fierce military campaign
BEIRUT—Syrian government forces bombed civilian targets in the northwestern Idlib province Wednesday, 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, President Bashar Assad’s forces have over the past few days captured dozens of villages, including major rebel strongholds in the last opposition-held area.
UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said the situation is increasingly dire following a spike in hostilities there in the past 48 hours.
Airstrikes were reported the previous day 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 by airstrikes as well as ground-based attacks, he said.
The airstrikes also hit and damaged educational and medical facilities, including Idlib Central Hospital and several facilities that were serving as a shelter for displaced people, Dujarric said.
He added that the UN is trying to expand cross-border aid deliveries to accommodate up to 100 trucks per day, but that needs on the ground “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, which is the last significant opposition-controlled region in the country. According to the UN, 948,000 people have been displaced — an exodus of people fleeing their homes toward 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 troops bombed hospitals, medical centres, schools and other civilian infrastructure in a bid to subdue the local population, opposition activists and aid organizations said.
The international humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders, or MSF, said three hospitals near the front lines that it supports received 185 wounded patients, including children, and 18 people who were dead on arrival, on Tuesday.
According to one of the surgeons who spoke to MSF, there were amputations and neurological injuries among the victims. “Along with the sound of bombings and the sound of sirens, people had panic attacks. It was a difficult, bloody day,” the surgeon, who was kept anonymous, said.
The Syrian Response Coordination Group, a relief group operating in the country’s northwest, said that government forces 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.
The group’s statement condemned the “silence by the international community” calling it an “open invitation” for Russian-backed government forces to continue their assault.
A doctor in Idlib who identified himself as Ihsan Eidi said that medical conditions were rapidly deteriorating in Idlib, adding that more than 50 hospitals and health centres have gone out of service over the past nine months.
“We had little equipment and most of it was damaged by the bombs, unfortunately,” he said in the video released by a charity organization known as Islamic Relief Worldwide. He added that with the flow of displaced people in the cold weather, tent settlements have become overcrowded, which makes disease spread more easily.