UN warns of Idlib catastrophe
More than 30,000 people have fled the rebel-held Syrian province of Idlib, where a threatened regime ground attack risks causing the worst humanitarian catastrophe of the century, the UN has said.
Regime and Russian planes have begun bombing the province and neighbouring areas. Idlib is the last redoubt of an uneasy coalition of jihadist and nonjihadist rebels, thousands of whom retreated there after refusing to surrender in previous battles. Two opposition-run hospitals have been destroyed in the bombing.
Mark Lowcock, head of humanitarian affairs at the UN, said that although terrorist groups were operating among the opposition in Idlib, there were ‘‘100 civilians, most of them women and children, for every fighter’’. He added: ‘‘There need to be ways of dealing with this problem that don’t turn the next few months in Idlib into the worst humanitarian catastrophe with the biggest loss of life in the 21st century.’’
The offensive on Idlib has been threatened since the summer, when President Baashar alAssad’s regime retook the last rebel-held zone in the south, along the Jordanian and Israeli borders.
Idlib represents a much bigger challenge. More than half the province is controlled by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a group formed from the former Nusra Front, the al-Qaeda branch fighting in the Syrian war. HTS claims to have renounced those ties to focus on the war but it remains a UN-designated terrorist group.
The other rebels, ranging from hardline Islamists to secular regime defectors, are also determined to resist the advance. Many have already refused to surrender elsewhere and with the Turkish border closed they have nowhere else to go.
The rebel militias rule over a territory occupied by almost three million civilians, half of them forced into Idlib from other parts of Syria.
The rebels have been showing off their tunnels, fortifications and military equipment as they await a ground attack that could be imminent, given the failure on Friday of talks between the regime’s backers, Iran and Russia, and Turkey, which supports elements of the rebellion.