The United Nations said that nearly 415,000 civilians fled their homes in southeastern Idlib province and western rural Aleppo to escape the bombing campaign the Assad regime and Russian forces have launched in the region since early December.
Between 15 and 19 January, more than 38,000 people fled western rural Aleppo, the UN humanitarian affairs office (OCHA) said.
The United Nations expressed “grave concern” over the increase in displacement in northwestern Syria, while a OCHA spokesman David Swanson told France Press that there is “almost daily information about airstrikes and artillery fire in the area.”
In a statement on Friday, Misty Boswell of the International Committee of the Red Cross said that “the recent escalation has opened the door to a dangerous new front.”
“The camps are full, health services are depleted, and the majority of (the displaced) live in fragile, overcrowded tents, flooded with water,” Boswell said.
Anadolu Agency, meanwhile, published photos of displaced people sheltering themselves on a railway road after IDP camps in northwestern Syria were filled with people fleeing the bombing by the Assad regime, Russia, and Iran militias. More than 200 households took refuge near the railway which previously connected Aleppo with Latakia. (Source: Syrian National Coalition’s Media Department)
