BEIRUT: Russian warplanes battered Syria’s rebel-controlled Idlib on Tuesday for the first time in three weeks, a war monitor said, as expectations mount of a government offensive in the northwestern province.
Regime ally Moscow and rebel backer Ankara have held several rounds of talks aimed at averting an assault, but government troops have been massing near the rebel zone.
“Russian warplanes resumed bombing Idlib province after a 22-day pause,” said Rami Abdel Rahman, who heads the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
The air raids “came a day after rebel units in Idlib hit regime positions in neighboring Latakia province, which killed three pro-regime fighters,” Abdel Rahman told AFP.
Tuesday’s bombardment hit several areas held by the jihadist-led Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham alliance, among them the large town of Jisr Al-Shughur, but also areas held by rival Turkish-backed rebels, including the town of Ariha.
Abdel Rahman could not immediately provide a death toll for the strikes.
Seized from government forces in 2015, Idlib and adjacent areas form the last major chunk of territory still in rebel hands.
The Syrian military has been deploying reinforcements to the zone for more than a month and Russian has stepped up its war rhetoric.
“We know that the Syrian armed forces are getting ready to solve this problem,” President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday, calling Idlib a “pocket of terrorism.”
Moscow has been carrying out strikes in Syria since September 2015, using aircraft based at the Hmeimim base in Latakia province.
Russia accuses rebels in Idlib of attacking Hmeimim with weaponized drones and insists jihadist groups in the province must be eliminated.
Analysts say there is still a window of opportunity to avoid the humanitarian impact of a full-scale offensive.
The presidents of Turkey, Russia and fellow regime ally Iran are to meet in Tehran on Friday for three-way talks that are expected to focus on Idlib.
An estimated three million people — half of them displaced from other parts of Syria — live in the province and adjacent rebel-held areas.
Russian air strikes batter Syria’s Idlib
Russian air strikes batter Syria’s Idlib
- Syrian President Bashar Assad has sworn to recapture every inch of Syria
- Last week, a source close to Damascus said the government was preparing a phased offensive to recover Idlib province
The UN says Al-Hol camp population has dropped sharply as Syria moves to relocate remaining families
The UN says Al-Hol camp population has dropped sharply as Syria moves to relocate remaining families
- Forces of Syria’s central government captured the Al-Hol camp on Jan. 21 during a weekslong offensive against the SDF, which had been running the camp near the border with Iraq for a decade
DAMASCUS: The UN refugee agency said Sunday that a large number of residents of a camp housing family members of suspected Daesh group militants have left and the Syrian government plans to relocate those who remain.
Gonzalo Vargas Llosa, UNHCR’s representative in Syria, said in a statement that the agency “has observed a significant decrease in the number of residents in Al-Hol camp in recent weeks.”
“Syrian authorities have informed UNHCR of their plan to relocate the remaining families to Akhtarin camp in Aleppo Governorate (province) and have requested UNHCR’s support to assist the population in the new camp, which we stand ready to provide,” he said.
He added that UNHCR “will continue to support the return and reintegration of Syrians who have departed Al-Hol, as well as those who remain.”
The statement did not say how residents had left the camp or how many remain. Many families are believed to have escaped either during the chaos when government forces captured the camp from the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces last month or afterward.
There was no immediate statement from the Syrian government and a government spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
At its peak after the defeat of IS in Syria in 2019, around 73,000 people were living at Al-Hol. Since then, the number has declined with some countries repatriating their citizens. The camp’s residents are mostly children and women, including many wives or widows of IS members.
The camp’s residents are not technically prisoners and most have not been accused of crimes, but they have been held in de facto detention at the heavily guarded facility.
Forces of Syria’s central government captured the Al-Hol camp on Jan. 21 during a weekslong offensive against the SDF, which had been running the camp near the border with Iraq for a decade. A ceasefire deal has since ended the fighting.
Separately, thousands of accused IS militants who were held in detention centers in northeastern Syria have been transferred to Iraq to stand trial under an agreement with the US
The US military said Friday that it had completed the transfer of more than 5,700 adult male IS suspects from detention facilities in Syria to Iraqi custody.
Iraq’s National Center for International Judicial Cooperation said a total of 5,704 suspects from 61 countries who were affiliated with IS — most of them Syrian and Iraqi — were transferred from prisons in Syria. They are now being interrogated in Iraq.
