Thousands more people have fled violence in northwest Syria,
the United Nations and a medical agency said on Thursday, as an army assault on
the last big rebel enclave met a counter-attack, Reuters reported.
President Bashar al-Assad launched his offensive at the end
of April in Idlib and parts of adjacent provinces with an intense bombardment,
saying insurgents had broken a truce.
This week, rebels rolled back some government advances on
the main battlefront, retaking the town of Kafr Nabouda.
Government forces are buttressed by Russian air power, while
the main jihadist group that dominates Idlib has been reinforced by
Turkey-backed rebels.
Eight years into the civil war, Assad has retaken most of
Syria and rebels still fighting him are squeezed into the northwest.
Turkey-backed groups hold a strip of territory on the border, and Kurdish-led
fighters hold the northeast.
This week’s fighting brought a big increase in air strikes,
with bombs falling on towns and villages across the southern part of the
enclave, said a British-based war monitoring group, the Syrian Observatory for
Human Rights.
Some 600 air strikes hit the rebel enclave on Thursday, the
Observatory said, killing six civilians.
THOUSANDS FLEE, HUNDREDS DIE
More than 200,000 people have now fled the violence since
the end of April, the United Nations said, and are in urgent need of food and
protection.
The Union of Medical Care and Relief Organisations (UOSSM),
which provides assistance to health facilities, said the number of displaced
this month had spiked to more than 300,000.
Most of the displaced have sought refuge along the border
with Turkey, the UOSSM said, with camps springing up in the shadow of the
frontier wall.
However, 44,000 people have moved to the regional capital
Idlib and another 50,000 have gone to Maarat al-Numan, another large town where
the Observatory said an air strike on a marketplace killed 12 people on Tuesday
night.
The bombardment has used both conventional air strikes by
war planes and “barrel bombs” – improvised explosives dropped by helicopter –
according to the Observatory and rescue services.
Since the end of April, there have been 20 attacks on
healthcare facilities and one on an ambulance, the United Nations said, putting
19 facilities that serve at least 200,000 people out of action. Some were hit
more than once, it said.
The Observatory said 669 people have been killed since the
end of April, 209 of them civilians. The UOSSM said 229 civilians had been
killed in that period.
Rebels fighting on the mountainous western edge of the
enclave said on Sunday that the army had shelled them with poison gas, leading
some to suffer choking symptoms.
The US State Department warned it would respond “quickly and
appropriately” if that was proven.
However, US Syria envoy James Jeffrey said on Wednesday that
Washington did not have confirmation that poison had been used. Rebels said
they had not documented the attack because they were under bombardment when it
occurred.
Syria’s government denies using chemical weapons.
