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IDLIB: Tens of thousands of displaced Syrians say they have become trapped in an “open-air prison” in the northwestern province of Idlib which they fear will be the army’s next target.
Opposition fighters and civilians who have sought refuge in the opposition-held province, most recently from second city Aleppo, say they are suffering from skyrocketing prices and overpopulation.
At least 25,000 people, including opposition fighters, have left east Aleppo since Thursday under an evacuation deal that will see the city come under full regime control.
Many of them have headed to neighboring Idlib province to stay with relatives or in displacement centers.
“We did not want to leave our land, but they used every weapon available to force us out,” says Abu Mohammad, a father of four from east Aleppo.
“Now they’ve prepared a prison for us in order to besiege us and bombard us,” he adds, speaking to AFP in a camp hosting around 100 displaced families.
Idlib has been held since March 2015 by a coalition of rebels led by the Ahrar Al-Sham group and Fateh Al-Sham Front. Since then, tens of thousands of people from across the country have flooded the province.
The UN office for humanitarian affairs, OCHA, estimates that 700,000 internally displaced people have found shelter in Idlib since Syria’s war erupted nearly six years ago.
Many of those displaced to Idlib are fleeing government bombardment or evacuating besieged areas under local deals with the regime.
These “reconciliation” agreements typically see fighters and civilians bussed out of a town in exchange for an end to shelling or siege by government troops.
In addition to Aleppo, six other towns near Damascus have been evacuated in the last several months, including Daraa and Moadamiyet Al-Sham.
The influx to Idlib has had an overwhelming effect on everyday life, with the cost of rents and basic food skyrocketing and shortages becoming a common reality.
Abu Yazan Al-Ramah, a fighter who arrived in April from the besieged rebel town of Zabadani near the Lebanese border, says living in Idlib was “tough.”
“It’s expensive. There are some things you can’t find or at times they are unaffordable,” says the 30-year-old who has joined up with a local rebel group in order to survive.
Continuing to work with opposition groups is often the only way that displaced men can secure shelter or food.
According to Abu Zeid, a rebel who was wounded near Damascus, armed groups often provide newly displaced fighters in Idlib with free housing, clothes, food “and sometimes money.”
Even local business owners in Idlib are struggling to respond to the soaring needs.
“The population increased and so has demand,” says grocery shop owner Jalal Al-Ahmad.
Ahmad says he buys his merchandise mainly from neighboring Turkey but admits that when he is stuck, he gets supplies from regime-held areas.
“It is much more expensive to buy from regime-held areas,” says Ahmad, lamenting the rising cost of basic products such as rice, sugar, tea, cooking oil and eggs.
With the new arrivals, he fears Idlib is being turned into “a massive prison, an open-air prison, that can be shut down at any time.”
“And if it does, it will be like the (Israeli blockaded) Gaza Strip and the regime will begin to eliminate us,” Ahmad adds.
Meanwhile, clashes between Turkish-backed Syrian fighters and Daesh militants intensified around the northern Syrian town of Al-Bab on Wednesday, killing four Turkish soldiers and more than 40 radicals, the army said.
Turkey’s military said the opposition forces, which have been besieging Al-Bab for weeks, had largely established control over the strategic area around the town’s hospital.
“Once this area has been seized, Daesh’s dominance of Al-Bab will to a large extent be broken,” it said in a statement. Daesh is suicide bombers and vehicle-borne explosives intensively, it added.
Turkey’s military was pressing on with the operation after its foreign minister and his Russian and Iranian counterparts said in Moscow on Tuesday that they were ready to help broker a deal to end Syria’s almost six-year-old war.