- This is the third straight day in which a significant increase in airstrikes has been observed
BEIRUT: War monitors said on Tuesday there had been a marked escalation in airstrikes in opposition-held northwestern Syria, the last major bastion of opponents of Bashar Assad, prompting thousands of civilians to flee the town of Khan Sheikhoun.
Rami Abdul Rahman, the director of the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said the regime forces had intensified artillery shelling and airstrikes that have been ramping up over the past 10 days.
“The bombing is focused mainly on towns along the Damascus-Aleppo international road,” he said. “Khan Sheikhoun has turned into a ghost town.”
According to a senior data analyst at Hala Systems, which operates an early warning system for aerial bombardment called Sentry, 13 strikes had been observed in Idlib and northern Hama on Tuesday.
“This is the third straight day in which a significant increase in airstrikes has been observed. The pace of attacks seems high — and certainly unusual compared to the last few months,” the analyst, who declined to be named, told Reuters.
Evacuation
Hundreds of suspected militants and their relatives exited the last Daesh group holdout in eastern Syria aboard 11 trucks on Tuesday, an AFP reporter said.
The huge double-trailer trucks snaked toward a screening point manned by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) across the plain from Baghouz, the last hamlet still held by Daesh.
Women could be seen spilling out of the trucks as SDF fighters prepared to screen yet another batch of survivors from the last speck of the “caliphate.”
On Monday alone, 46 such trucks left the Daesh pocket, bringing to around 50,000 the number of people who quit militants-held territory since December.