Faizel Patel, Radio Islam News – 05-09-2018
As air raids pounded areas in Syria’s last rebel-held province of Idlib, killing several civilians, the UN’s top humanitarian advisor for Syria has appealed for sanity saying it was no way to “liberate a people or to save a city by crushing it with the civilians inside.”
The strikes yesterday came as the United Nations urged Russia, a Syrian government ally, and Turkey, which backs certain rebel groups in Idlib, to help avert a “bloodbath”.
Activists say the bombing mainly targeted the city of Jisr al-Shughour on Idlib’s western edge, along with its surrounding towns and villages.
Jan Egeland, the Special Advisor to the UN Special Envoy for Syria, told journalist in Geneva intense humanitarian and political diplomacy on Idlib was ongoing.
“If it succeeds we will have hundreds of thousands of lives spared; if it fails in the next days and hours we could see a battle more cruel than any previous battle in this, the cruellest war of our generation.”
Egeland says the building of forces and the fortification inside Idlib signals that innocents would die at a much higher ratio than armed men in a war scenario, which would also endanger the humanitarian lifeline for some two million people.
“We are prepared now in our planning for war, but we pray there will be no war. We cannot have war in Idlib because it’s filled to the brim with the internally displaced, with civilians.”
Egeland appealed for “sanity” which would mean “not repeating eastern Aleppo, eastern Ghouta, and Ar-Raqa.
0 Comments