Regime attacks displaced 200,000 within 5 months: NGO

By Ashraf Musa

IDLIB, Syria (AA) - Roughly 200,000 civilians have been displaced from their homes in Idlib and Hama over the last five months due to repeated violations of the Sochi Agreement by the Syrian regime, according to an NGO.

Speaking to Anadolu Agency, Mohamed al-Hallaj, director of the Response Coordinators Team, said that some 122,000 people had been displaced from their homes in the region within the last six weeks alone.

Al-Hallaj attributed the recent spike in displacements to continued attacks by the Syrian regime and its allies.

Attacks by the regime and Iran-backed terrorist groups in Idlib’s de-escalation zone are estimated to have killed at least 152 civilians -- and injured more than 445 others -- since the beginning of 2019.

Last September, Turkey and Russia agreed to turn Idlib into a de-militarized zone -- in which acts of aggression are expressly prohibited -- following a meeting between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in the Russian city of Sochi.

Syria has only just begun to emerge from a devastating conflict that began in 2011 when the Assad regime cracked down on demonstrators with unexpected severity.