UN says humanitarian law needs to be respected in Idlib

By Umar Farooq

WASHINGTON (AA) - The UN Security Council unanimously agreed Wednesday that humanitarian law should be respected while combating terrorism in Syria's Idlib province and there is international support for a ceasefire agreement.

"Yes it is of course legitimate to fight terrorists, but it has to be done with respect for international humanitarian law," Geir Pedersen, the UN's special envoy for Syria, told reporters after a Security Council meeting.

Some 1.5 million people currently reside in Idlib, roughly half of whom have been displaced from other parts of the country.

Turkey and Russia agreed last September to turn Idlib into a de-escalation zone in which acts of aggression would be expressly prohibited.

The Syrian regime and its allies, however, have consistently broken the terms of the ceasefire, launching frequent attacks inside the de-escalation zone.

More than 160 civilians have been killed and roughly 270,000 others have been displaced this month alone due to heavy shelling and aerial bombardment between the regime and opposition forces, according to the UN.

While Pedersen condemned the amount of civilian casualties in the fighting, he stopped short of calling the activities by the Assad regime illegal.

James Jeffrey, the U.S. special envoy for Syria, said "there is overwhelming international support for an immediate ceasefire in Idlib".

However, he noted that the ceasefire would come with "hard decisions" that the U.S., Russia and Syria would have to face in terms of negotiating a halt in the fighting.