Half a million people have been displaced for two months in north-western Syria, where the government of Bashar al-Assad and his Russian ally are pursuing an offensive against jihadists and rebels, the UN announced on Tuesday.
" Since December 1, some 520,000 people have been displaced (...), the vast majority of them (80%) are women and children, " David Swanson, a spokesperson, told AFP. of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha).
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Supported by the aviation of Moscow, the regime continues for several weeks an offensive which allowed him to reconquer several cities and localities of the province of Idleb and its surroundings, ignoring truces which finally remained dead letter.
" The almost daily violence (...) has caused unjustifiable suffering for hundreds of thousands of people living in the area, " said Swanson. " This latest wave of displacement is worsening an already dire humanitarian situation on the ground, " he said.
The " majority " of the displaced are fleeing " the front areas " in the south of Idleb province, said Swanson. " Most of the newly displaced are going to urban areas and IDP camps in northwest Idleb ", or to territories in the north of neighboring Aleppo, near the border with Turkey, according to him.
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Half of the people who have lived in Idleb province in recent years have been Syrians who had had to flee other parts of the country taken over by the regime. This province and certain areas of the neighboring regions of Aleppo, Hama and Latakia, are dominated by the jihadists of Hayat Tahrir al-Cham (HTS, former Syrian branch of Al-Qaeda). Rebel groups are also present there.
The Idleb region was already the scene of a major offensive between April and August 2019 that killed nearly a thousand civilians, according to the OSDH. The Syrian government, which now controls more than 70% of the country, said it was determined to reconquer the entire sector.
Syria has been ravaged since 2011 by a conflict that has left more than 380,000 people dead and millions displaced.
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