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Damascus to let civilians flee rebel-held Idlib
DAMASCUS, Aug 22, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – Damascus said Thursday it is opening
a corridor for civilians to leave the opposition-held northwestern region of
Idlib, where government bombardment has killed hundreds since late April.
The announcement came a day after government forces recaptured the
strategic Idlib province town of Khan Sheikhun from jihadists and allied
rebels.
Damascus has opened such corridors out of rebel bastions in the past as
a prelude to retaking them either by force or through negotiated surrenders.
The Idlib region, which sits on the Turkish border, is now the last
major stronghold of opposition to the Russia-backed government of President
Bashar al-Assad.
It has been ruled since January by the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham alliance,
which is led by jihadists from Syria’s former Al-Qaeda affiliate.
“The Syrian government announces the opening of a humanitarian corridor
in Souran in the northern countryside of Hama province,” state news agency
SANA quoted a foreign ministry source as saying.
The corridor will be used to evacuate “civilians who want to leave areas
controlled by terrorists in northern Hama and the southern countryside of
Idlib”, it added.
The government said it would provide shelter, food and medical care for
civilians who chose to leave the region.
Civilians are often fearful about taking up government offers of refuge
or safe passage for fear of arrest or conscription into the government’s
depleted armed forces.
– Besieged pocket –
Wednesday’s advance saw government forces cut off a pocket of territory
stretching from the south of Idlib province into neighbouring Hama, the
Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
The pocket includes the town of Morek and the nearby areas of Kfar Zita
and Latamneh.
The planned corridor will allow their remaining residents to escape into
government-held territory, the Britain-based monitor said.
But most civilians had already fled before the pocket was cut off,
Observatory head Rami Abdul Rahman told AFP.
The encirclement of Morek has raised the stakes between the Russian-
backed government and Turkey, which has troops manning an observation post in
the town.
“Neither Damascus nor Moscow is likely interested in attacking a Turkish
observation point in Idlib head-on, killing Turkish soldiers and provoking a
more serious incident,” said Sam Heller of the International Crisis Group
think tank.
“But this latest advance has shown that they can simply advance around
Turkish positions if they choose, reducing those Turkish observer forces to
irrelevance.”
Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency said Thursday that Syrian war
planes opened machine gun fire near one of Ankara’s observation points, in a
village north of Khan Sheikhun.
The Observatory said that regime war planes launched air raids on an
area 300 metres away from the observation point in the village of al-Surman.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will discuss the situation in
Idlib with his Russian and Iranian counterparts during a summit in Ankara on
September 16, presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said late Wednesday.
Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova on Thursday said
that Moscow is continuing to collaborate with Turkey on Syria.
– ‘No life here’ –
The Idlib region of some three million people was supposed to be
protected by a proposed buffer zone agreed by Moscow and rebel backer Ankara
last September.
But HTS failed to pull back from the zone as agreed, and in April
government and Russian forces resumed intense bombardment of the region.
Nearly 900 civilians have been killed since late April, according to the
Observatory.
More than 400,000 more have fled their homes, the United Nations says.
On Thursday, government warplanes struck villages east of Maarat al-
Numan, another key town on the Damascus-Aleppo highway, the Observatory said.
The goal of the bombardment is to force civilians to flee ahead of a
push towards the rebel-held town, it added.
Abu Hussein fled his village outside Maarat al-Numan earlier this week,
after heavy bombardment by Damascus and its Russian ally.
“Towns and villages are now empty of their residents,” he told AFP.
“There is no life here, you don’t see anything except warplanes
launching strikes or helicopters dropping barrel bombs.”
The war in Syria has killed more than 370,000 people since it started
with the brutal suppression of anti-government protests in 2011.
Rival interventions by outside powers have turned it into a complex
conflict, with multiple battlefronts that have driven millions of civilians
from their homes.
BSS/AFP/BZC/2015HRS