The displaced people prefer their destroyed homes to being exposed to “Covid-19” in the Idlib camps

Despite the destruction of his home in northwestern Syria, Hassan Khoreibi decided to return to his city of Jericho, in an attempt to protect his ten children from the threat of an epidemic of Covid-19 that threatens a humanitarian catastrophe if it spreads in the overcrowded camps for the displaced.

"The camps are overcrowded and we have feared the possibility of the spread of the Corona virus there due to overcrowding," said Khreibi, 45, who returned a week ago with his family to his hometown two months after the displacement.

"So we decided to return to our homes, even if they were destroyed, so that we could live on top of their rubble."

No new HIV infection has yet been registered in and around Idlib, but international humanitarian organizations have warned of a catastrophe if the epidemic affects the overcrowded camps mainly spread near the Turkish border in the north. The camps lack basic services, especially health facilities such as water and sanitation networks.

And Khreibi is one of about a million people who were displaced from their cities and villages in the southern Idlib countryside and the neighboring southern Aleppo countryside to escape military operations for almost three months, before stopping under a Russian-Turkish agreement in the first week of March.

In Jericho, hundreds of returnees are trying to restore life little by little to the city, and some have started repairing the damages to buildings and homes, and others have reopened their shops and searched for their livelihood.

Despite the truce's resistance and the absence of warplanes from the airspace in the region, Khoreibi casts doubt on the persistence of the ceasefire agreement, and expresses his belief that the new Corona virus played a role in freezing the military escalation in Idlib.

The same reason prompted Yasser Al-Suhaim, 52, to return with his wife and seven children to Jericho two months after their displacement, despite the destruction of their home.

Like many, Yasser hopes that the people of the city will return and help each other in rebuilding and starting again.