Saraqib: More than 400,000 people have been displaced by air raids in northwestern Syria over the past three months, the UN said yesterday, as its human rights chief condemned “international indifference” over a mounting civilian death toll.
“Air strikes kill and maim significant numbers of civilians several times a week, and the response seems to be a collective shrug,” UN rights chief Michelle Bachelet said in a statement.
He said more than 100 people, including 26 children, have died in air strikes on hospitals, schools, markets and bakeries in north-west Syria in the past 10 days.
The jihadist-dominated Idlib region is supposed to be protected by a months-old international truce deal, but has faced growing bombardment by the government and its ally Russia since late April.
The spike in violence has killed more than 740 civilians, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Aid groups have described the latest bloody episode of Syria’s eight-year civil war as a “nightmare”.
More than 400,000 people have fled violence in the area since the end of April, said David Swanson of the United Nations’ humanitarian co-ordination office OCHA.
He spoke as regime air raids pummelled a market in the Idlib province town of Saraqib, the second attack on the same market this week, according to the Observatory.
The Britain-based monitor said one civilian was killed and several others were wounded there yesterday, four days after a similar attack killed more than seven.
It said two other civilians were killed and 20 others were wounded in regime attacks elsewhere in the region.
Bachelet warned of continued regime attacks against schools, hospitals, markets and bakeries in the Idlib region.
“These are civilian objects, and it seems highly unlikely, given the persistent pattern of such attacks, that they are all being hit by accident,” she said in a statement.
“Intentional attacks against civilians are war crimes, and those who have ordered them or carried them out are criminally responsible for their actions.”
The region under attack is home to some three million people, nearly half of them already displaced from other parts of the country.
It covers nearly all of Idlib and parts of neighbouring Aleppo, Hama, and Latakia provinces.
Most of the displacement is from southern Idlib and northern Hama, the two areas that have been hit hardest by the flare-up, OCHA said.
“The majority of those fleeing have displaced within Idlib governorate while a smaller number have moved into northern Aleppo governorate.
“Roughly two-thirds of people displaced are staying outside camps,” it said.
Approximately 100 schools in Idlib are now hosting displaced people, OCHA said.
Many are forced to live in the open air because of overcrowding in camps and reception centres, it added.
The Idlib region is controlled by jihadist alliance Hayat Tahrir Al Sham, led by Al Qaeda’s former Syria affiliate.
A September accord struck between Moscow and Ankara was supposed to spare the region the bloodshed of a government assault, but it was never fully implemented as jihadists refused to withdraw from a planned buffer zone.