The Bashar Assad regime, with the promise of resettling displaced Syrians into the town of Maarat al-Numan, is merely a cover for the media, just to send them back after the news is aired.

According to locals speaking to Anadolu Agency (AA), the Assad regime’s intelligence, the Mukhabarat, has forcefully gathered families originally from Maarat al-Numan in the provinces of Hama and Aleppo, threatening them with arrest and being shot if they did not comply.

People that were brought to Maarat al-Numan, which is south of Idlib, with three regime buses were filmed by pro-regime media outlets and were then published by the regime’s agency SANA that families were returning to Maarat al-Numan.

However, on the same day, the families were sent back following the media coverage.

Maarat al-Numan, which was home to around 150,000 people in 2019, is now a field of leveled and gutted buildings, where shops' iron shutters are riddled with bullet holes and shrapnel scars.

Maaret al-Numan lies on the M5 highway linking Damascus to Syria's second city Aleppo, a main artery coveted by the regime as it tries to rekindle a moribund economy.

For years, the Assad regime has ignored the needs and safety of the Syrian people, only eyeing further gains of territory and crushing the opposition. With this aim, the regime has for years bombed vital facilities like schools, hospitals and residential areas, causing the displacement of almost half of the country’s population while adopting policies to make their lives more difficult.