GENEVA: The escalation in fighting in Syria has displaced around 280,000 people in just over a week, the United Nations said on Friday, warning that numbers could swell to 1.5 million.

“The figure we have in front of us is 280,000 people since Nov 27,” Samer Abdel Jaber, head of emergency coordination at the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP), told reporters in Geneva.

“That does not include the figure of people who fled from Lebanon during the recent escalations” in fighting there, he added.

The mass displacement has happened since fighters led by Hayat Tahrir Al Sham (HTS) launched their lightning offensive a little more than a week ago.

That occurred just as a tenuous ceasefire in neighbouring Lebanon took hold, following two months of full-blown war that drove hundreds of thousands to flee into Syria.

The WFP warned that the fresh mass displacement inside Syria, more than 13 years after the country’s civil war erupted, was “adding to years of suffering”.

Abdel Jaber said the WFP and other humanitarian agencies were “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 also stressed the urgent need for more funding to ensure humanitarians are “ready for any scenario basically in terms of displacements that could evolve in the coming days or months”.

Abdel Jaber 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”.

Army quits east

Kurdish-led fighters, who already controlled most of north-eastern Syria, said on Friday that they had moved into eastern areas formerly held by the government as troops withdrew.

The Syrian army and its Iran-backed allies “suddenly” pulled out of Deir Ezzor province as an offensive led by an Al Qaeda affiliate dealt President Bashar Al Assad’s government a series of stunning blows in the northern and central regions, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR).

“In order to protect our people, our Deir Ezzor military council fighters were deployed in Deir Ezzor city and west of the Euphrates River,” the Arab-majority council affiliated with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) said in a statement.

“Syrian regime forces and commanders of Iran-backed allied groups suddenly withdrew from Deir Ezzor city and its countryside,” the SOHR said.

Their redeployment towards the oasis town of Palmyra came as the anti-government fighters, spearheaded by the Hayat Tahrir Al Sham group, reached the gates of Syria’s third city Homs, to its west.

Since the collapse of the caliphate proclaimed by the militant Islamic State group in 2014, Deir Ezzor province had been broadly divided between government forces, on the right bank of the Euphrates, and Kurdish-led forces on the left.

Unrest in south

Assad’s troops also relaxed their grip on the south, allowing armed groups in Daraa province to take control of the Nassib-Jaber border crossing with Jordan, the Observatory said. Jordan closed its side of the crossing, Interior Minister Mazen Al Faraya said.

“Armed factions seized control of the Nassib border crossing with Jordan, as well as nearby checkpoints and towns,” the Observatory chief said.

Elsewhere in the province, they captured a police station and an air force intelligence base.

Daraa province was the cradle of the 2011 uprising against Assad’s rule, but it returned to government control in 2018 under a ceasefire deal brokered by Assad ally Russia.

Former anti-government fighters there who accepted the 2018 deal were able to keep their light weapons.

In Nawa, north of Daraa city, the Observatory said “local fighters managed to control several positions … after a broad attack targeting the military intelligence department”.

“In retaliation, regime forces … shelled residential areas in Nawa,” the monitor said, adding that the shelling extended to other towns.

Daraa province has been plagued by unrest in recent years, with frequent attacks, armed clashes and assassinations, some claimed by the militant Islamic State group.

Published in Dawn, December 7th, 2024