DAMASCUS: Damascus said Thursday it is opening a corridor for civilians to leave the rebel-held northwestern region of Idlib, where government bombardment has killed hundreds since late April, state media said.
The announcement came a day after government forces captured the key Idlib province town of Khan Sheikhun from extremists and allied rebels.
Damascus has opened such corridors out of other rebel bastions in the past as a prelude to retaking them either by force or through negotiated surrenders.
The Idlib region, which sits on the Turkish border, is now the last major stronghold of opposition to the Russia-backed government of President Bashar Assad.
Wednesday’s advance saw government forces cutting of a pocket of territory stretching from the south of Idlib province into neighboring Hama, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said.
“The Syrian government announces the opening of a humanitarian corridor in Souran in the northern countryside of Hama province,” state news agency SANA quoted a foreign ministry source as saying Thursday.
The corridor will be used to evacuate “civilians who want to leave areas controlled by terrorists in northern Hama and the southern countryside of Idlib.
The Idlib region has been ruled since January by the Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham alliance, which is led by extremists from Syria’s former Al-Qaeda affiliate.
The government refers to all rebel groups in Idlib as “terrorists.”
The region of some three million people was supposed to be protected by a proposed buffer zone agreed by Moscow and rebel backer Ankara last September.
But the extremists of HTS failed to pull back from the zone as agreed and in April government and Russian forces resumed intense bombardment of the region.
Around 890 civilians have been killed, according to the Britain-based Observatory.
More than 400,000 more have led their homes, the United Nations says.
The entry of government forces into Khan Sheikhun raises the stakes between Damascus and Ankara, which has troops deployed in the nearby town of Morek, that is now cut off.
The war in Syria has killed more than 370,000 people since it started with the brutal suppression of anti-government protests in 2011.
Damascus to let civilians flee rebel-held Idlib
Damascus to let civilians flee rebel-held Idlib
- The corridor will help evacuate individuals in “areas controlled by terrorists”
- The Idlib region has been ruled since January by the Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham alliance
5 bodies of migrants washed ashore in east of Libya’s capital Tripoli, police officer says
TRIPOLI: At least five bodies of migrants including two women have been washed ashore in َQasr Al-Akhyar, a coastal town in the east of Libya’s capital Tripoli, a police officer told Reuters on Saturday.
Hassan Al-Ghawil, head of investigations at the Qasr Al-Akhyar police station, said that according to people in the area, a child’s body washed ashore and because of the waves’ height the body returned to the sea, and the coast guard was asked to search for it.
Ghawil said the bodies are all dark-skinned people. The bodies were found on Emhamid Al-Sharif shore in the western part of the town by people who reported to the police station.
Libya has become a transit route for migrants fleeing conflict and poverty to Europe across the Mediterranean since the fall in 2011 of dictator Muammar Qaddafi to a NATO-backed uprising. Factional conflict has split the country into western and eastern factions since 2014.
Qasr Al-Akhyar is a coastal town some 73 kilometers (45 miles) east of Tripoli.
Pictures were posted on the Internet, and also seen by Reuters, showing the bodies of the migrants lying on the shore, where some were still within black inflatable lifebuoys.
“We reported to the Red Crescent to recover the bodies,” said Ghawil. “The bodies we found are still intact and we think there are more bodies to wash ashore.”
Earlier this month, fifty-three migrants, including two babies, were dead or missing after a rubber boat carrying 55 people capsized off the coast of Zuwara town in western Tripoli, the International Organization for Migration said.
Last week, a UN report said migrants in Libya, including young girls, are at risk of being killed, tortured, raped or put into domestic slavery, calling for a moratorium on the return of migrant boats to the country until human rights are ensured.
