Exodus Grows From Northwest Syria in Intensified Fighting

Date: 24 May 2019 - 21:58

News ID: ۶۶۳۱۶

DAMASCUS (Dispatches) – Thousands more people have fled violence in northwest Syria, the United Nations and a medical agency says, as an assault on the last big terrorist enclave met a counter-attack.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad launched the operation at the end of April in Idlib and parts of adjacent provinces with an intense bombardment, saying terrorists had broken a truce.
Government forces are buttressed by Russian air power, while the main militant group that dominates Idlib has been reinforced by Turkey-backed militants.
Eight years into the foreign-backed war, Assad has retaken most of Syria and terrorists still fighting him are squeezed into the northwest. Turkey-backed groups hold a strip of territory on the border, and Kurdish-led militants hold the northeast.
This week’s fighting brought a big increase in air strikes, with bombs falling across the southern part of the enclave.
The Syrian army warned civilians to leave the country’s northwestern Idlib province as it prepares for a final military campaign to flush terrorists out of the region.
Leaflets were distributed from Syrian helicopters urging residents to leave the entire province in order to protect their lives.
The impending operation comes amid an escalation in clashes in the province after the Syrian army launched an offensive to counter numerous terrorist violations of an earlier de-escalation agreement.
Under the agreement, which was signed between Russia and Turkey last year, terrorist groups had to withdraw from areas bordering government-controlled areas in the region.
Despite Turkey’s pledge to implement the deal, the Takfiri groups have never complied with the agreement and have periodically launched attacks against Syrian troops from the buffer zone.
Syria has witnessed increased hostile drone attacks, notably targeting the strategic Hmeimim airbase in the northeastern Latakia province and various vital installations in the west-central Hama province.
Russia had previously warned that advanced technologies on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) acquired by terrorists required "professional knowledge and experience” in operating drones.