The fighting intensified on Friday 20 December in Idleb (north-west), the last large bastion hostile to Damascus. The bombings of the Syrian regime and its Russian ally this week caused the displacement of tens of thousands of civilians, the United Nations said. Further weakening the ceasefire at the end of August.
"Following the intensification of air strikes and bombings since December 16 on the south of Idleb, tens of thousands of civilians are said to have fled the region of Maaret al-Noomane (...) towards the north of Thousands more would wait for the bombing to drop before leaving, "said the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in a statement.
Friday "fighting on the ground also resumed along the front lines in the south of the province of Idleb, amplifying the displacements from the south of Idleb", it is added in the text. The province of Idleb, which is home to around three million people, many of whom are displaced from other Syrian regions, is dominated by jihadists from the Hayat Tahrir al-Cham group (HTS), a former Syrian branch of Al Qaeda.
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, more than 80 combatants have been killed since Thursday in Idleb in violent clashes between regime forces and armed groups, including 51 jihadists and rebels, and 30 pro-regime combatants. These deadly clashes took place in particular near the town of Maaret al-Noomane, controlled by the jihadists.
At the same time, the Russian air force, which supports the regime's forces, is bombarding the areas around Maaret al-Noomane and the neighboring city of Saraqeb, according to the OSDH. An AFP correspondent confirmed a wave of displacements, the inhabitants of the targeted areas fleeing the violence en masse.
"Immediate de-escalation"
At the same time, Russia and China vetoed the Security Council over a draft resolution by Germany, Belgium and Kuwait extending the humanitarian aid of the United Nations by one year, passing through the Turkish and Iraqi borders, four million Syrians.
The regime's main supporter, Moscow believes that the latter has regained enough control in the country over the past year to ensure the transfer of international humanitarian aid from its territory. On Wednesday, the humanitarian adviser to the United Nations special envoy to Syria, Najat Rochdi, condemned the resurgence of violence in the Idleb region, calling for an "immediate de-escalation", in the aftermath of bombings carried out by the regime having killed 23 civilians.
Despite the truce announced by Moscow in this region, bombing and ground fighting have already killed more than 250 civilians since the end of August in addition to hundreds of combatants from both camps, according to the OSDH. In October, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad paid his first visit to the province since the start of the war in 2011, saying that the battle for Idleb was the key to ending it.
The conflict in Syria, sparked by the suppression of pro-democracy protests by the Damascus regime, has left more than 370,000 people dead and millions displaced.
With AFP
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