On Monday, Russian airstrikes killed eleven displaced people, including four children and three women, while they were fleeing the western region of Aleppo province.
According to Zaman al-Wasl’s reporter, the Russian airstrikes targeted a minibus carrying displaced people in the Kafrnaha town west of Aleppo city.
The Russian-backed regime offensive has focused mainly on Idleb province in the northwest, and also lately on neighboring Aleppo. It is an attempt to seize control of a strategic highway that links the capital, Damascus, and the north. The push has accelerated in the last two weeks and government forces Wednesday seized control of the key town of Maarat al-Nu’man, which sits along the highway.
The United Nations has estimated that 400,000 Syrians have been displaced over the past two months — 315,000 in December and 75,000 in January.
According to advocacy group Save the Children, half of those displaced are children, adding that at least 37,000 children were forced to flee in the month of January.
During a one-week period in mid-January, 34 children and 13 women were killed, the UN said.
Trucks and other vehicles have crammed the roads as civilians — some of them already displaced by earlier fighting — packed up their meager belongings to leave the towns and villages under attack.
Idleb and parts of rural Aleppo are the last areas controlled by rebels in Syria. With assistance from allies Russia and Iran, Assad has managed to regain territories earlier lost to the opposition and now controls nearly 73 percent of Syria, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitoring group.
This article was edited by The Syrian Observer. The Syrian Observer has not verified the content of this story. Responsibility for the information and views set out in this article lies entirely with the author.
