UN: 100,000 SYRIANS DISPLACED IN 8 DAYS

BEIRUT— Intense fighting between Syrian government troops and insurgents in Syria’s central Hama province displaced 100,000 people over eight days between late August and early September, the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said.

Earlier this month, insurgents pushed northward in Hama province, surprising government troops and dislodging them from areas they controlled around the provincial capital, also called Hama, including a military base and towns and villages near the highway to Damascus.

The offensive, led by an ultraconservative Islamic group, Jund Al-Aqsa, and also involving several factions from the Western-backed Free Syrian Army, incurred an intense government bombing campaign that killed dozens of people. The fighting and the aerial bombardment sent tens of thousands of people fleeing for safety. In a “flash update” on Tuesday, OCHA said figures from a camp co-ordination group show nearly half of the displaced from Hama arrived in the neighbouring rebel-held Idlib governorate. Others fled toward government-controlled Hama city, where four mosques were converted into temporary shelters, OCHA said. A shortage of shelter space means many displaced families are sleeping outdoors in parks in Idlib, the UN agency said.

Most of those fleeing left towns and villages in government areas as the rebels advanced. They feared a violent government response to the insurgent offensive, according to Ahmad al-Ahmad, an activist from Hama.