The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) warns that civilians, including humanitarian workers, are facing serious threats to their safety as hostilities escalate in northern Syria and spread to other parts of the country. The fighting also continues to cause severe damage to critical infrastructure and disrupt aid operations, while Syria is already facing one of the world's largest humanitarian crises.
More than 370,000 people have been uprooted in north-west Syria in a matter of days following the sudden and massive offensive into government-held areas led by the non-state armed group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). In an update on Friday, OCHA said that hundreds of civilians are estimated to have been killed or injured over the past week, although the situation is highly fluid and exact casualty figures have yet to be confirmed.
HTS, along with a coalition of Turkish-backed armed groups, has over the past week seized control of Aleppo, Hama and dozens of surrounding towns in north-west Syria amid a complete collapse of forces loyal to the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, amid reports of heavy fighting in Homs, Syria's third-largest city.
Air strikes on densely populated areas in Aleppo city and Idlib reportedly killed 69 people, including women and children, and injured at least 228. According to the humanitarian organization CARE International, three local aid workers have been killed as a result of the conflict near Aleppo.
The fighting reportedly involves Syrian government forces, the Russian air force, and non-state armed groups, and is the worst for more than four years. At least 370,000 people have been displaced since the escalation of hostilities, including 100,000 who have been displaced more than once. Most of those forced to flee are women and children. Tens of thousands have arrived in north-east Syria.
The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) working in the north-east estimate that between 60,000 and 80,000 people have been newly displaced, including more than 25,000 currently in collective centers.
According to the UN, these collective centers fill up as soon as they are allocated. With these sites now at capacity, people are sleeping on the streets or in their cars in sub-zero temperatures. The UN is working with its humanitarian partners in the north-east to assess the needs of families who have arrived at the reception centers.
In the city of Hama, local authorities say tens of thousands of families have been displaced in the city, some of whom have fled to Homs. Hama had previously been a destination for people fleeing hostilities in and around Idleb and Aleppo. More than 370 civilians are reported to have been killed in Hama as a result of the clashes.
Since the start of the escalation in hostilities, more than 30 health facilities in north-west Syria have ceased operations, putting immense strain on the remaining functioning hospitals.
Meanwhile, humanitarian aid has continued to flow from Turkey through three border crossings into the embattled north-west, and the UN World Food Programme (WFP) reported that it had opened community kitchens in Aleppo and Hama - cities now occupied by HTS fighters.
Speaking in Geneva on Friday after a humanitarian assessment mission to the Middle East, a UN World Food Programme (WFP) official described the newly unfolding emergency in Syria as “a crisis on top of another” – a reference to the country’s civil war that began in 2011, sparked by a civil uprising against the Syrian government.
Since then, the war has drawn in regional and international powers and defied all efforts to end it. Hundreds of thousands of people are believed to have been killed.
Samer AbdelJaber, who heads the WFP's Emergency Coordination, Strategic Analysis and Humanitarian Diplomacy unit, warned that some 1.5 million people are likely to be displaced “and will be requiring our support.”
“Of course, the humanitarian partners are working on both sides of the front lines we're trying to reach the communities wherever their needs are,” he said.
The WFP official noted that the sudden escalation has not caused the closure of three humanitarian crossings with Turkey and that aid continues to flow into Aleppo, Syria's second city.
The UN agency “has opened and supported two community kitchens that are providing hot meals in both Aleppo as well as in Hama,” he said, adding that “the aid partners are on the ground and doing everything they can to basically provide the assistance to the people”.
Millions of Syrians are already in crisis because of the war, which has devastated the economy and people's livelihoods, threatening their very survival.
“It’s at a breaking point at the moment in Syria, after 13 or 14 years of a conflict, over three million Syrians are severely food insecure and cannot afford enough food,” AbdelJaber said.
Despite the clear need for more support, international funding for Syria's $4.1 billion humanitarian plan "faces its largest shortfall ever," the WFP official continued, with less than one-third of what is needed for 2024 having been received so far.
According to media reports, Turkey, Russia and Iran are expected to meet in Qatar this weekend to discuss their response to the stunning rebel advance that has dramatically altered the front lines in Syria's 13-year civil war. The meeting will be held on the sidelines of the Doha Forum.
Russia and Iran, which back Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, launched the Astana process in 2017 in the Kazakh capital, Astana, along with Turkey, which sponsors some of the rebel factions. Their goal was to find a political solution to the civil war.
Russia and Turkey managed to broker a ceasefire in 2020 that largely halted the fighting, leaving Assad in control of all major cities and an estimated 70 percent of Syrian territory. But in a surprising offensive last week, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and its allies seized Syria's second-largest city, Aleppo, and moved on to capture Hama, closing in on Syria's third-largest city, Homs.
Hama had remained in government hands since the outbreak of the civil war in 2011.
Turkey, which does not want an independent Kurdish entity in northeastern Syria, has long supported the Syrian National Army (SNA), a coalition of armed opposition groups at odds with the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) - a Kurdish-led military alliance. Days after the HTS offensive began, clashes reportedly broke out between the rival militias.
On Thursday, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said the developments in Syria over the past week are “grave and dramatic,” and it is “high time” for all parties in the country to “engage seriously” to resolve the nearly 14-year-long conflict.
“Tens of thousands of civilians are at risk in a region already on fire,” Guterres told reporters.
“We are seeing the bitter fruits of a chronic collective failure of previous de-escalation arrangements to produce a genuine nationwide ceasefire or a serious political process to implement Security Council resolutions. This must change.”
On November 27, several rebel groups aligned under the leadership of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham launched their biggest challenge in years to the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. They swept into Aleppo, which the government had held since 2016, stunning the Syrian army and capturing the airport, a military academy, and much of the city.
They also took towns and villages in the Idlib Governorate. According to media reports, the rebel alliance of HTS and SNA took full control of the central city of Hama on Friday, and the rebels have seized a number of towns, including Ar Rastan, on their way to Syria's third largest city, Homs. Thousands have reportedly fled Homs ahead of the fighting.
Guterres said he had just spoken by phone Thursday with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Turkey has taken in millions of Syrian refugees since the war began in 2011.
“I emphasized the urgent need for immediate humanitarian access to all civilians in need, and a return to the UN-facilitated political process to end the bloodshed,” Guterres said he told the Turkish leader.
The Secretary-General told reporters it is time “to chart a new, inclusive and comprehensive approach” to ending the war.
“In other words, restoring Syria’s sovereignty, unity, independence and territorial integrity — and meeting the legitimate aspirations of the Syrian people,” he said.
Guterres urged the parties to recommit to a nearly 10-year-old Security Council resolution that calls for UN-facilitated dialogue and to “engage seriously” with his Special Envoy Geir Pedersen.
Pedersen warned in a briefing to the UN Security Council on Tuesday that without de-escalation and a swift move to talks, “Syria will be in grave danger of further division, deterioration and destruction.”
Syria's civil war grew out of peaceful anti-government protests that the Syrian government brutally crushed.
More than 13 years after civil war broke out in the country, Syrians are living through one of the largest humanitarian crises in the world. Across Syria, 16.7 million people - more than 70 percent of the population - are in need of humanitarian assistance and protection, with women and children particularly affected.
An estimated 15.4 million people in the country face acute food insecurity, 1.8 million people urgently need access to safe drinking water, and more than 500,000 children require life-saving treatment for acute malnutrition.
Before the latest escalation, some 13.6 million people had been forcibly displaced from their homes as a result of the war. While 7.2 million women, men and children were internally displaced within their own country, the civil war had resulted in more than 6.4 million Syrian refugees, mostly in Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan and Germany.
Even before this escalation, the situation was particularly dire in the north-west of the country, bordering Turkey, with nearly half of Syria's displaced people living in Idleb and Aleppo.
The upsurge in hostilities comes at a time when the humanitarian response is facing its worst funding gap since the start of the Syrian crisis. The 2024 Syria Humanitarian Response Plan (HRP) is the largest humanitarian funding appeal ever for a single country. With less than a month left in the year, the Syria HRP has secured only 31 percent of the US$4.07 billion needed to help the most vulnerable.
North-west Syria is home to 4.2 million people, 80 percent of whom are internally displaced, having fled the war multiple times. The lack of funding has led to the suspension of aid and essential services, including water and sanitation support in hundreds of camps and health services in more than 80 health facilities.
Some information for this report provided by VOA.