ANSD : Regime shelling kills 22 civilians in Idlib: activists

TUE 30 - 4 - 2024

Date: Apr 5, 2019
Source: The Daily Star

Regime shelling kills 22 civilians in Idlib: activists

BEIRUT: Heavy bombardment by the Syrian army of the militant-controlled Idlib region has killed 22 civilians, an activist group said Thursday, the latest violence to threaten a 7-month-old truce. The cease-fire was brokered by the main foreign backers of the warring parties in September to head off a government offensive that prompted U.N. warnings of humanitarian disaster for the region’s 3 million residents.

But since the region was overrun by the Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham alliance led by former Al-Qaeda militants in January, the fragile truce has come under mounting assault.

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem accused Turkey, which signed the deal on behalf of the rebels, of failing to honor its commitments and warned that his government’s patience was running out.

The U.N. humanitarian affairs office said the escalating violence threatened aid deliveries to some 2.7 million people in need.

In the latest flare-up, army artillery and rocket fire on the Idlib towns of Kafranbel and Maaret al-Numan killed 13 people Thursday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. It came after shelling of adjacent militant-held areas of Hama and Aleppo provinces killed nine people late Wednesday, the Britain-based Observatory said.

The U.N. humanitarian office said the escalating violence had already killed 90 civilians in the Idlib region in March, nearly half of them children.

More than 86,500 people fled their homes in February and March as a result of the escalation, it added.

The U.N. expressed concern over “increased shelling along front lines, an intensification of airstrikes and a growing number of attacks involving improvised explosive devices in urban areas.”

The Syrian foreign minister said his government was growing impatient to recapture Idlib, the last region outside its control apart from the Kurdish-held north and northeast where Washington retains a troop presence.

Moallem said Turkey had failed to ensure the withdrawal of militants forces from a planned buffer zone along the front line as stipulated by the truce agreed in the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi.

“It is known that Turkey is responsible for a delay in implementing” the deal, he said at a joint news conference with his Venezuelan counterpart Jorge Arreaza.

“Honestly, we are still waiting for the Sochi deal to be implemented but our patience has its limits and we must liberate this land,” he said.

“We are losing patience.”

More than half of the population of the Idlib region has already fled government offensives on other rebel-held regions of Syria. Many people live in tent cities where they are dependent on humanitarian aid and deeply vulnerable to a resurgence of all-out conflict.

Moallem also accused the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump of going back and forth and lying about its intention to withdraw the 2,500 troops the U.S. maintains in northern Syria.

Trump’s administration “lies” all the time about withdrawing its troops from the country, and its decision to recognize Israeli sovereignty over the occupied Golan Heights increases America’s isolation, he said.

Moallem pledged to recover “every inch” of Syria’s territory, including the Golan, saying all options were on the table.

Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria in the 1967 Middle East War and annexed it in 1981, a move that was never internationally recognized. Trump recognized the annexation last month in a decision that has been condemned by the Arab League and U.N. Security Council countries.

“Trump’s attempts to give Israel sovereignty over the Golan have only one effect ... which is to increase America’s isolation even from its closest allies,” Moallem said.

He spoke at a joint news conference in Damascus with Venezuela’s Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza, who lauded what he described as Syria’s victory over “terrorism” in the country’s 8-year-old war and said both countries were victims of a U.S. conspiracy.

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