Militant offensive in Syria has displaced 280,000 – UN

The total could grow to 1.5 million, a World Food Program official has warned

The renewed fighting between Islamist groups and government forces in Syria has displaced around 280,000 people in a matter of days, the United Nations reported on Friday.

Samer AbdelJaber, who heads emergency coordination at the UN’s World Food Program (WFP), has warned that the number of refugees could swell to 1.5 million.

Militant forces led by the group Hayat Tahrir-al-Sham (HTS) launched a surprise assault from their base in Idlib last week, in the first major clash between jihadist and Syrian government forces since March 2020, when Russia and Türkiye brokered a ceasefire in the country after years of civil war.

Translated as the “Organization for the Liberation of the Levant,” HTS is sanctioned by the UN Security Council as a terrorist group.

“The figure we have in front of us is 280,000 people since November 27,” AbdelJaber told reporters in Geneva, warning that the latest mass displacement inside Syria was “adding to years of suffering.”

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Over the past week, the militants have driven back Syrian troops and taken significant territory in the northeast of the country, capturing Aleppo, the second-largest city, which had been under government control since 2016. On Thursday, the jihadists captured the key city of Hama after forcing the withdrawal of the army.

Hama is strategically located in central Syria, about 200km from the capital Damascus; it is also approximately 50km north of the city of Homs.

According to media reports on Friday, thousands of people are fleeing Homs, Syria’s third-largest city, amid reports of the militants’ advance.

AbdelJaber said the WFP and other humanitarian agencies are “trying to reach the communities wherever their needs are,” and that they were working “to secure safe routes so that we can be able to move the aid and the assistance to the communities that are in need.”

He cautioned that “if the situation continues evolving [at the current] pace, we’re expecting collectively around 1.5 million people that will be displaced and will be requiring our support.”