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More Than 235,000 Flee Intense Bombing in NW Syria

Agence France-Presse

   BEIRUT - Civilians on Friday packed a road leading out of a flashpoint
   town in northwest Syria, where two weeks of heightened regime and
   Russian bombardment has displaced 235,000 people.

   Pick-up trucks carrying mattresses, clothes and household appliances
   ferried entire families out of southern Idlib province, most heading
   toward safer areas farther north, said an AFP correspondent on the
   ground.

   Since mid-December, regime forces and their Russian allies have
   heightened bombardment on the southern edge of the final major
   opposition-held pocket of Syria, eight years into the country's
   devastating war.

   The latest violence in the jihadist-dominated Idlib region has killed
   scores of civilians, despite an August cease-fire deal and
   international calls for a de-escalation.

   More than 235,000 people fled the area between Dec. 12 and 25, mostly
   from the beleaguered city of Maaret al-Numan which has been left
   "almost empty," according to the United Nations' humanitarian
   coordination agency OCHA.

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