More than 235,000 flee amid intensified fighting in Idlib

BEIRUT — Civilians on Friday packed a road leading out of a flashpoint town in northwest Syria, where two weeks of intensified fighting in Idlib province 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.

The latest violence in the extremist-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.

"I can't live in the camps," said Umm Abdo, a mother of five who recently arrived in a displacement camp in the town of Dana, north of Idlib's provincial capital.

"The rain is very strong, and we need heating... clothes, and food," she said, her tired eyes showing through her veil.

Fierce battles, squalid camps 

The Idlib region hosts some three million people, including many displaced by years of violence in other parts of Syria.

It is dominated by the country's former Al-Qaeda affiliate, Hayat Tahrir Al Sham, whose chief this week urged extremists and allied rebels to head to the frontlines and battle "the Russian occupiers" and the regime.

Since December 19, HTS extremists and their rebel allies have been locked in fierce battles with regime forces around Maaret Al Numan.

Damascus loyalists have seized dozens of towns and villages from extremists in clashes that have killed hundreds of fighters on both sides.

The advances have brought them to within 4 kilometres of Maaret Al Numan, one of Idlib's largest urban centres.

According to OCHA, ongoing battles have further amplified displacement from the area and the nearby town of Saraqeb.

"People from Saraqab and its eastern countryside are now fleeing in anticipation of fighting directly affecting their communities next," it said.

The mass displacement could not come at a worse time, with heavy rainfall flooding squalid camps for the displaced.

"Being forced to move in winter months exacerbates existing vulnerabilities, particularly of the women, children, elderly, people with disabilities and other vulnerable groups," OCHA said.

Since mid-December, the fighting has killed nearly 80 civilians, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor.

The escalation has forced aid groups to suspend operations in the area, exasperating already dire humanitarian conditions, OCHA said.

Idlib's residents mainly depend on critical cross-border aid, which came under threat last week after Russia and China vetoed a UN Security Council resolution that would have extended such deliveries for a year.

The move raised fears that vital UN-funded aid could stop entering Idlib from January unless an alternative agreement is reached.