More displaced likely if violence mounts in Syria against last rebel area
BEIRUT — The U.N. food agency warned Friday of a worsening humanitarian situation in Syria’s last rebel stronghold in the country’s northwest as rebel groups battled government forces to regain territory they lost earlier this week.
The latest wave of fighting, which began 10 days ago, is the most serious challenge to a cease-fire brokered by Russia and Turkey last September. Already, some 150,000 people have been displaced inside the enclave, which is home to 3 million people and spans most of Idlib province and part of Hama in the country’s northwest corner.
“The situation inside Idlib and northwest Syria is dire and should escalation in violence continue, more desperate families will be displaced,” said Marwa Awad, spokeswoman for the World Food Program in Syria.
The agency was already forced to suspend aid delivery in the past few days to about 47,000 people of a total of 580,000 it had been reaching before the violence. Dozens of the newly displaced, many uprooted by violence several times before, are living out in the open in olive groves.
The violence escalated in the past few days as government forces advanced on the southern edge of the rebel stronghold — gaining control since Wednesday of a couple of villages and towns there.
On Friday, rebel groups launched a counteroffensive to reclaim Kfar Nabudah, a village some described as the first line of defense for Idlib, which was captured by the government Wednesday. Its capture enabled government troops to advance to the east, regaining control of the town Qalaat Madiq.
Syria state al-Ikhbariya TV claimed troops repelled the insurgent attacks against Kfar Nabudah village.
But the Britain-based war monitoring group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the insurgents, led by al Qaeda-linked...