BEIRUT: Airstrikes on several locations in northwest Syria near the border with Turkey have killed at least one person and set afire several trucks used to distribute aid, opposition activists and a paramedic group said Monday.
The late Sunday attacks angered Turkey, which had asked Russia to secure an immediate end to the strikes, Turkey’s Defense Ministry said, adding that Turkish troops had been placed on alert.
Turkey and Russia support rival parties in Syria’s 10-year conflict. The countries reached a deal last March that stopped a Russian-backed government offensive on the northwestern Idlib province, the last major rebel stronghold in war-torn Syria.
Opposition activists claimed that Russian warplanes carried out the attacks near the Bab Al-Hawa border crossing with Turkey late Sunday, hours after government artillery shelling hit a major hospital in a rebel-controlled town in northwestern Syria. Six patients, including a child, were killed. Medical staff were wounded, forcing the facility to shut its doors.
The Bab Al-Hawa border crossing is a main point from which aid is brought to rebel-held parts of northwest Syria.
Idlib-based journalist Salwa Abdul-Rahman said one of the strikes hit an area near the town of Sarmada, setting afire trucks used by aid workers to distribute assistance.
“The targeted locations were civilian with no military presence,” she said.
One person was killed in the strikes, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitor, and the opposition’s Syrian Civil Defense, also known as White Helmets.
The civil defense said that in addition to the trucks, the strikes targeted a cement factory. The truck fires were put under control hours later.
An AP video from the area showed about a dozen trucks on fire as civil defense members sprayed them with water.
Turkey’s Defense Ministry blamed Syrian government forces for the attack, saying it left several people wounded.
Strikes on northwest Syria kill 1 person, cause wide damage
Strikes on northwest Syria kill 1 person, cause wide damage
- The late Sunday attacks angered Turkey, which had asked Russia to secure an immediate end to the strikes
- Opposition activists claimed that Russian warplanes carried out the attacks near the Bab Al-Hawa border crossing with Turkey
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.
