Civilians on Friday packed a road leading out of a flashpoint town in northwest Syria, where two weeks of heightened regime and Russian bombardment has displaced 235,000 people.
Pick-up trucks carrying mattresses, clothes and house-hold appliances ferried entire families out of southern Idlib province, most heading towards safer areas further north, said an AFP correspondent on the ground.
Since mid-December, regime forces and their Russian allies have heightened bombardment on the southern edge of the final major opposition-held pocket of Syria, eight years into the country’s devastating war.
The latest violence in the jihadist-dominated Idlib region has killed scores of civilians, despite an August ceasefire deal and international calls for a de-escalation.
More than 235,000 people fled the area between December 12 and 25, mostly from the beleaguered city of Maaret al-Numan which has been left “almost empty”, according to the United Nations’ humanitarian coordination agency OCHA.
OCHA spokesman David Swanson said Friday that more than 80 per cent of those who have fled southern Idlib this month are women and children.
