In the village of al-Nayrab, in the northwest of the opposition-held enclave of Idlib, Ali al-Ahmad burns olive branches in a stove to keep his destroyed house warm.
NEARLY 30,000 CHILDREN SUFFER HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS IN SYRIA, SAYS UNSUPPORTED COMMISSION
He lives in the destroyed house, which was recently hit during a bombardment by government forces. It’s in better condition than most of the surrounding homes that have been reduced to rubble, he says. When a new bombardment begins, he leaves for a while to stay in one of the nearby IDP camps until the situation calms down and he can return and repair the damage.
“We come back for a day or two and then they start bombing us,” he said. “We leave for a few days, then we go back to our village and our houses are destroyed. “
The U. N. -backed body, the International Independent Commission of Inquiry on Syria, said this week that since October, the country has experienced the worst wave of violence since 2020.
The Syrian civil war has entered its fourteenth year. The United Nations World Food Program estimates that more than 12 million Syrians do not have normal food. In December, the World Food Program announced it would end its major aid program in Syria in 2024. (AP Photo)
The war, which has killed nearly a million people and displaced part of the pre-war population of 23 million, began with nonviolent protests against Assad’s government in March 2011.
The protests, which were part of the popular uprisings of the Arab Spring that swept across much of the Middle East that year, were brutally suppressed and the revolt temporarily escalated into a full-blown civil war, made even more confusing by the intervention of foreign powers. forces from all sides of the conflict, as well as the development of militancy, first of teams linked to Al Qaeda and then of the Islamic State organization until its defeat in 2019.
Russia, along with Iran, has Assad’s best friend in the war, Turkey has subsidized several Syrian opposition teams while the United States has subsidized Syrian Kurdish forces in the fight against ISIS. Israel has carried out airstrikes against the Lebanese militant organization Hezbollah and Iranian forces in Syria.
Over the years, the battlefields have come to a standstill in this war-torn country.
The recent surge in violence began with a drone attack on a graduation rite at the military academy in the government city of Homs in October, which killed dozens of people.
Allied Syrian and Russian forces then introduced shelling into the opposition-held northwest, affecting “well-known and visible hospitals, schools, markets and displacement camps,” the commission said.
Elsewhere, increasingly common Israeli moves have targeted Iranian-linked targets in spaces controlled by Syria’s government, attacks that have also hit civilians. Turkey has stepped up its attacks on U. S. -backed Kurdish forces in northeastern Syria, while militants from ISIS sleeper cells have introduced sporadic attacks elsewhere in the country.
In recent weeks, opposition-held areas have also experienced unrest, with protests in Idlib targeting leaders of the al-Qaida-linked Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group, which controls the region.
Given the complex stages of the conflict, there is no end in sight to the crisis in Syria.
David Carden, the U. N. ‘s deputy regional humanitarian coordinator for the Syria crisis, said at a recent stopover in northwest Syria that the U. N. ‘s humanitarian response plan for 2023, which had requested more than $5 billion, had only secured 38% of the funds sought. the lowest point since the United Nations began making appeals.
“There are another 4. 2 million people in need in northwest Syria, in addition to 2 million children,” 1 million of whom are out of school, he said. “It’s a lost generation. “
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The devastating 7. 8 magnitude earthquake on February 6, 2023, which killed more than 59,000 people in Turkey and Syria, has worsened Syria’s misery. Some 6,000 people have been killed in Syria alone, most often in the northwest of the country, where most of the remaining 4. 5 million people rely on humanitarian aid to survive.
U. N. agencies and other humanitarian organizations have struggled to fund rescue systems in Syria, blaming donor fatigue, the COVID-19 pandemic and conflicts that have erupted in recent years.
The United Nations World Food Programme, which estimates that more than 12 million Syrians do not have normal food, announced in December that it would end its major aid program in Syria in 2024.