Syrian offensive sends civilians fleeing their homes
BEIRUT — As many as 100,000 people have been forced to flee their homes in northwest Syria as the government of President Bashar Assad and his patron, Russia, have intensified a military offensive there in recent days, aid groups said.
Trapped between the violence and a closed Turkish border, the civilians are huddling in makeshift settlements that, in many cases, lack toilets or clean water.
There is no foreseeable end to the suffering for the roughly 3 million residents of Idlib province, which has been slipping out of the Syrian rebels’ grip, airstrike by airstrike, skirmish by skirmish, bringing Assad increasingly close to controlling the entire country again after more than eight years of civil war.
To the north, Turkey has sealed its border, keeping displaced civilians out. Other international powers have long since stopped efforts to intervene against the government’s advances, even as they call for political change in Damascus.
The renewed violence comes as the government pushes farther into Idlib, nibbling at the last patch of territory held by the Syrian opposition — in this case, rebels led by a group linked to al-Qaida and known as Hayat Tahrir alSham, or HTS. The Syrian army has been pushing toward the town of Maarat al Noaman in what appears to be an effort to capture a strategic highway to Aleppo, a major city in the northwest.
The past few days have brought a spike in urgency and desperation for civilians in Idlib, many of whom landed there from other parts of Syria after the government retook their home areas from the rebels. Drivers and cars were scarce as people hurried to find a way out of Maarat al Noaman, which Russian and Syrian government warplanes have been bombarding relentlessly during the latest assault.
Now they are homeless, sleeping under strung-up blankets, on sidewalks and in the open, in near-freezing temperatures.
Since the military offensive in Idlib started in the spring, at least 5,262 civilians have died, including 246 children, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitoring group. About 400,000 residents were displaced in the spring, most of them moving toward the Turkish border.