Airstrikes Target NW Syria, Displace Thousands

Arab World

June 9th, 11:16am

Asharq Al-Awsat

Renewed airstrikes on Syria's last major rebel stronghold have sparked a new exodus of fearful civilians onto the Idlib region's roads | AFP

Suspected Russian airstrikes pounded villages on the edge of the last opposition enclave in northwestern Syria, sending thousands of civilians fleeing, activists reported Tuesday - scenes unseen in the area since a cease-fire three months ago. The violence at the edge of Idlib province is the most serious breach of the ceasefire in place since early March, when an agreement between Turkey and Russia halted the Syrian government´s three-month air and ground campaign into Idlib. The Syria Response Coordination Group, a team of aid workers, said the military escalation displaced more than 5,800 civilians in the last 24 hours from areas in southern Idlib and western Hama countryside. Many of the displaced had only recently returned to their villages after the ceasefire, the group said. On Monday, opposition fighters launched a limited offensive against government-held positions, briefly seizing a couple of villages. Government troops, backed by Russian air support, responded, repelling the insurgents but also widening their area of operations, targeting 10 villages, according to Mohamed Rasheed, a Syrian media activist documenting the offensive. Rasheed reported airstrikes, believed to be carried out by Russia's air force, on a number of villages in southern Idlib. He said he documented 45 airstrikes since Monday. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights recorded 15 airstrikes on Tuesday, also saying they were believed to be Russian. The Observatory and other local networks said at least one civilian was killed in Kansafra village. The raids led to the death of one civilian in the village of Balyun -- the "first to die from an airstrike" since the March ceasefire, Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said. Home to around three million people, the Idlib region is Syria's last major rebel bastion after nine years of devastating civil war. A Russian-backed government offensive between December and March displaced nearly a million people in the region. The truce reached on March 6 has largely halted the fighting but President Bashar al-Assad has vowed to retake full control of the region. Russia resumed airstrikes earlier this month and on Monday hit parts of Idlib and neighboring Hama provinces with dozens of airstrikes, the Observatory said. The strikes came as ground fighting left 19 government troops and 22 fighters dead, the Britain-based monitor said. The war in Syria has killed more than 380,000 people and displaced nearly half of the country's pre-war population since it started in 2011.

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