Syria presses assault amid fears over mass displacement

Syria presses assault amid fears over mass displacement

About 900,000 people have been forced from their homes and shelters in less than three months, leaving huge numbers to sleep rough in the thick of winter.

AFPUpdated: Wednesday, February 19, 2020, 04:08 AM IST
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Internally displaced people, who fled from Idlib, ride on a pick up truck with their belongings in Azaz on Saturday. | REUTERS/ANI

Syrian troops pressed an offensive on Tuesday on the country’s last major rebel enclave where the mass displacement of civilians is sparking fears of a humanitarian catastrophe. About 900,000 people have been forced from their homes and shelters in less than three months, leaving huge numbers to sleep rough in the thick of winter. Children have died of exposure in snow-covered camps and the United Nations has warned that the crisis could worsen if no ceasefire is reached to facilitate the relief effort.

“Over the past four days alone, some 43,000 newly displaced people have fled western Aleppo where fighting has been particularly fierce,” UN spokesman David Swanson told AFP. Since the start of February, the displacement figure was a staggering 300,000, he said. The wave of displacement is the biggest since the start of the civil war nearly nine years ago. It is largest exodus of civilains since World War II. “The violence in northwest Syria is indiscriminate. Health facilities, schools, residential areas, mosques and markets have been hit,” the UN head of humanitarian affairs and emergency relief, Mark Lowcock, said on Monday.

He said that basic infrastructure was falling apart, that health facilities were being destroyed and that the risk of disease outbreaks was high. “The biggest humanitarian horror story of the 21st Century will only be avoided if Security Council members, and those with influence, overcome individual interests and put a collective stake in humanity first,” Lowcock said. Russia, the main foreign broker in Syria, has vetoed countless resolutions on the conflict. “The only option is a ceasefire,” Lowcock said.

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