As the world was celebrating entering 2022, vulnerable Syrian civilians in the war-torn country’s north spent the first day of the year under bombardment by Russian forces.
Two children and a woman were killed in the attacks while 10 others were injured, most of them children, the White Helmets civil defense group wrote on Twitter on Saturday.
The group said that the attacks happened in the village of Nahr Alabyad near Jisr Shughour in western rural Idlib in the late hours of the night.
White Helmets teams rescued the injured and retrieved the dead bodies.
“Russia started the year 2022 by bombing different areas in northwestern Syria. Its air forces attacked the vicinity of Idlib city, Kansafra and Jadida in Idlib while its artilleries targeted Kafr Taal village, west of Aleppo,” the group said.
The United Nations also condemned the attack on civilians.
“On New Year’s Day while most of the world was celebrating, in northwest Syria the airstrikes were continuing and more civilians were killed, including children,” Mark Cutts, the U.N.'s deputy regional humanitarian coordinator for Syria said on Sunday.
“As always, it’s the civilians who are paying the highest price,” he added.
Idlib continues to suffer at the hands of the Bashar Assad regime and its backer Russia. Both are determined to recapture the last opposition stronghold and normalize political relations with regional countries, particularly within the scope of steps already taken with several Arab countries.
The Idlib region is home to nearly 3 million people, two-thirds of them displaced from other parts of the country.
Nearly 75% of the total population in the opposition-held Idlib region depends on humanitarian aid to meet their basic needs, as 1.6 million people continue to live in camps or informal settlements, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said.
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 civilian facilities such as schools, hospitals and residential areas, causing the displacement of almost half of the country's population.
The situation for the people in Idlib worsened when the Assad regime, backed by Russia, launched an offensive on the province, causing the largest one-time displacement in the history of the Syrian civil war and a huge humanitarian tragedy, according to the U.N.
Frequent bombings and shelling have put nearly 50% of health facilities out of service, just as the Syrian people need them the most amid the coronavirus pandemic. Living in overcrowded tent camps or even out in the open in safe areas near the Turkish border, many are struggling to meet even basic needs.
The Idlib de-escalation zone was forged under an agreement between Turkey and Russia. The area has been the subject of multiple cease-fire agreements, which have been frequently violated by the Assad regime and its allies.
A fragile truce was brokered between Moscow and Ankara in March 2020 in response to months of fighting by the Russia-backed regime. Almost a million people have fled the Bashar Assad regime’s offensive; yet, the regime still frequently carries out attacks on civilians, hindering most from returning to their homes and forcing them to stay in makeshift camps.
