Syria displacement is worst since conflict began: U.N.

By Emma Farge

GENEVA (Reuters) – More people have fled fighting in Syria over the past 10 weeks than at any other time in the 9-year-old conflict and the city of Idlib, where many are sheltering, could become a graveyard if hostilities continue, two U.N. agencies said on Tuesday.

Syrian government forces are shelling their way northwards, backed by Russian air strikes, driving people toward the Turkish border as they try to seize remaining rebel strongholds near Idlib and Aleppo.

Turkey, which backs the rebels and is fearful of additional refugees, has retaliated militarily, with displaced civilians caught in between.

“It’s the fastest growing displacement we have ever seen in the country,” Jens Laerke from the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said, adding that nearly 700,000 people had fled since December, mostly women and children.

Another 280,000 people could flee from urban centers if fighting continues, including from the city of Idlib, which is packed with people who have escaped fighting elsewhere and which has not yet seen a full military assault on its center.

“It has the world’s largest concentration of displaced people and urgently need a cessation of hostilities so as not to turn it into a graveyard,” Laerke added.

Of Syria’s 17 million people, 5.5 million are living as refugees in the region, mostly in Turkey, and a further six million are uprooted within their own country.

Civilians are struggling to find shelter, amid harsh winter conditions with snow, rain and wind from Storm Ciara. Mosques are full and makeshift camps are overcrowded, said Andrej Mahecic, a spokesman for the U.N. refugee agency.

“Even finding a place in an unfinished building has become nearly impossible,” he told journalists in Geneva, describing the humanitarian crisis as “increasingly desperate”.

OCHA has sent 230 trucks over two authorized border crossings in Turkey so far this month, containing food, water and hygiene equipment, Laerke added. Last month, 1,227 trucks were shipped in the biggest cross-border aid operation there since the operation started in 2014.

The U.N. Security Council renewed a six-month program delivering aid to civilians in January but stopped crossings from Iraq and Jordan to avoid a veto from Russia which backs Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Aid workers say that is restricting their ability to help the displaced.

(Additional reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; editing by Philippa Fletcher)

Doctors go underground as Syrian government attacks rebel northwest

A general view of the Syrian town of Atimah, Idlib province, seen in this picture taken from Reyhanli, Hatay province, Turkey October 10, 2017. REUTERS/Osman Orsal

By Amina Ismail

BEIRUT (Reuters) – In part of northern Syria’s last rebel enclave, doctors have pulled back into cave shelters to treat the wounded and protect their patients from a government offensive that has hit health centers and hospitals.

The assault began in late April with air strikes, barrel bombs and shelling against the southern flank of the enclave, centered on Idlib province and nominally under the protection of a Russian-Turkish ceasefire agreed more than eight months ago. Limited ground advances have additionally taken place this week.

“The makeshift hospitals are very primitive,” Osama al-Shami, a 36-year-old doctor, told Reuters from the area. “We can barely save lives with the equipment we have and many of the injured die because of the lack of resources and equipment.”

The insurgents, dominated by the jihadist Tahrir al-Sham, describe the offensive as an invasion while the government accuses the rebels of violating the deal.

President Bashar al-Assad has sworn to take back every inch of Syria and the enclave including Idlib is the last big bastion of the rebellion that flared against him 2011.

The United Nations said last year that half of the region’s 3 million inhabitants had fled their homes, and the bombing has now caused a new wave of displacement.

More than 150,000 had left since April 29, The U.N. said on Tuesday, with bombs falling on over 50 villages, destroying at least 10 schools and hitting at least 12 health centers.

Under the bombs, medics are turning back to tactics used at other times in the eight-year war, moving patients into shelters under buildings or hacked into the ground. Some are opening up their houses as temporary health centers, said one surgeon.

But they are getting overwhelmed and Shami said several wounded children had died in his arms.

“One of them was a nine-year-old child who had a head and a chest injury and was severely bleeding. We tried to resuscitate him but he died within 15 minutes. There are no blood banks nearby or an equipped operating theater,” he said.

FRENCH, BRITISH CONCERNS

A war monitor, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said that, in the latest escalation of fighting and bombardments, 188 people including 85 civilians had been killed since April 30.

France’s President Emmanuel Macron said on Tuesday he had “grave concerns” over the escalation of violence in Syria including the strikes on hospitals.

British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt called the offensive a “flagrant violation of the ceasefire agreement”.

Backed by Russian air power and Iran-backed militias, Assad has retaken most of Syria.

U.S.-backed Kurdish forces hold the country’s northeast quarter, while control of the northwest is divided between jihadist groups and rebel factions supported by Turkey.

The current government offensive is focused on the southern flank of the rebel enclave.

On Wednesday, the Syrian army advanced into the town of Kafr Nabouda, rebels and a military media unit run by Assad’s ally Hezbollah reported.

The Observatory said fighters of Tahrir al-Sham – an incarnation of the former al-Qaeda affiliate the Nusra Front – launched a suicide attack against the army, detonating a bomb in an armored vehicle.

Rebels said heavy fighting continued at the town – close to where Shami is running his makeshift clinic – while the Hezbollah media unit said the army had gained complete control of it.

(Reporting By Amina Ismail, writing by Angus McDowall; editing by John Stonestreet)

Blasts kill dozens in Syria as U.S.-Russia truce talks make little progress

Syrian army soldiers inspect the damage at the site of two explosions that hit the Arzouna bridge area at the entrance to Tartous, Syria

By Lisa Barrington and Roberta Rampton

BEIRUT/HANGZHOU, China (Reuters) – Explosions in government-controlled areas of Syria and a province held by Kurdish militia killed dozens on Monday, while the United States and Russia failed to make concrete progress towards a ceasefire.

Six explosions hit west of the capital Damascus, in the government-held cities of Homs and Tartous – which hosts a Russian military base – and the Kurdish-controlled northeastern province of Hasaka between 8 a.m. and 9 a.m. (0500-0600 GMT), state media and a monitor said.

It was not clear if the blasts were linked and there was no immediate claim of responsibility.

More than five years of civil war have cut Syria into a patchwork of territories held by the government and an often competing array of armed factions, including Kurdish militia fighters, a loose coalition of rebels groups, and Islamic State.

The United States and Russia have been trying to broker a new truce after a cessation of hostilities agreed in February unraveled within weeks, with Washington accusing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces of violating the pact.

Their efforts were complicated on Sunday as government forces and their allies again laid siege to rebel-held eastern Aleppo, Syria’s largest city before the war which Assad is determined to fully recapture. His gains have relied heavily on Russian air support since September last year.

U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin had a longer-than-expected discussion of about 90 minutes on Monday about whether, and how, they could agree a deal, a senior U.S. administration official said.

Meeting at the G20 summit in China, they discussed getting humanitarian aid into the country, reducing violence, and cooperating on combating militant groups, the official said.

But in talks earlier on Monday, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov were unable to come to terms on a ceasefire for the second time in two weeks, with U.S. officials stressing they would walk away if a pact could not be reached soon.

“If an agreement can be reached, we want to do so urgently, because of the humanitarian situation. However, we must ensure that it is an effective agreement,” the official said.

Russia says it cannot agree to a deal unless opposition fighters, backed by the United States and Middle East allies, are separated from al Qaeda-linked militants they overlap with in some areas.

For Washington, the priority is stabilizing Syria so as to destroy Islamic State, which controls territory both there and in neighboring Iraq.

NATO Turkey ally on Sunday said rebels it was backing had gained control of all areas on its border that had been held by the jihadists, depriving the ultra-hardline Islamist group of its main route to the outside world.

The announcement came some 10 days after Turkey launched its first major military incursion into Syria since the start of the war in 2011, an operation aimed as much at preventing further Kurdish territorial gains as at driving back Islamic State.

DOZENS KILLED

Two of the explosions on Monday hit the Arzouna bridge area at the entrance to the Mediterranean city of Tartous, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and state news agency SANA said. Islamic State attacked Tartous in May.

The Observatory and a city hospital put the death toll at 35, including members of the Syrian military, and said the number was likely to rise.

Syrian state television said the first explosion was a car bomb and the second a suicide belt detonated as rescue workers arrived. The blasts hit during a summer festival at Tartous, whose beaches recently featured in a government tourism video.

A car bomb meanwhile struck Homs, a city around 80 km (50 miles) east of Tartous which has repeatedly been hit by bombings claimed by Islamic State. State media said three people were killed, while the Observatory said the explosion hit an army checkpoint and four officers were killed.

West of Damascus, there was an explosion near the town of al Saboura, killing one person and injuring three, according to a police commander quoted by state media.

A motorbike also exploded in the centre of the northeastern city of Hasaka, which is controlled by the Kurdish YPG militia.

The Observatory said the blast killed three members of a YPG-affiliated security force known as the Asayish, and injured others. It said a percussion bomb also went off in the province’s Qamishli city.

The Kurdish YPG militia, a critical part of the U.S.-backed campaign against Islamic State, took almost complete control of Hasaka city in late August after a week of fighting with the government.

Islamic State confirmed that a blast in Hasaka took place but did not say whether its fighters were involved.

The YPG already controls swathes of northern Syria where Kurdish groups have established de facto autonomy since the start of the Syrian war in 2011, much to the alarm of neighboring Turkey.

Ankara sees the YPG as an extension of Kurdish militants who have waged a three-decade insurgency in Turkey and fears the creation of a Kurdish enclave in northern Syria would fuel their separatist ambitions.

(Additional reporting by Kinda Makieh in Damascus and Ahmed Tolba in Cairo, Lesley Wroughton in Washington; Writing by Nick Tattersall; Editing by Giles Elgood)

ISIS fighters bring down Syrian Jet

A still image taken on July 14, 2016 from a video posted on social media said to be shot today, July 14, 2016, shows the wreckage of a Syrian jet that was brought down by Islamic State fighters near the

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Islamic State fighters brought down a Syrian jet near the eastern city of Deir al-Zor on Thursday, a monitoring group and an agency linked to the radical militant group said.

Amaq agency released video footage showing the flaming wreckage of a plane scattered across a stretch of barren rocky ground, as well as parts of a corpse in military uniform and a white helmet, hung out for display on a street. It said the body was that of the pilot.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based organization which monitors Syria’s war through a network of sources inside the country, said Islamic State had targeted and brought down the plane in the Thardah hills, about 3 miles (5 km) southwest of Deir al-Zor military airport.

Islamic State controls most of the eastern province of Deir al-Zor, though forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad hold the airport and part of Deir al-Zor city on the Euphrates river.

It was not immediately clear how the militants downed the jet, which the Observatory said was the second jet to be brought down over Islamic State territory since April. It said Islamic State had also brought down two helicopters in recent months.

(Reporting by Dominic Evans; Editing by Toby Chopra)

Free Syrian Army Losing Fighters To Islamic Extremists

FSAThe Free Syrian Army, who had been the main force in the uprising against the Syrian government, is losing fighters to the Islamic extremist group Jabhat al-Nusra.

The defection of fighters to the Islamic group is causing a problem for western governments who are looking to help the rebels in their fight against President Assad’s regime. Continue reading

Syrian Troops Massacre 300 In Darayya

Free Syrian Army sources are reporting that the Syrian government massacred 300 people in Darayya on Sunday claiming they were cleansing the area of “terrorist remnants.”

However, video footage being released is showing the bodies of women and children killed by the troops laying in the streets.

The chairman of the United Nations Human Rights Council’s Independent Commission of Inquiry on Syria told the BBC this could be a war crime. Continue reading